


a future was lost yesterday

by maleficently



Series: the fatal plunge [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 81,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maleficently/pseuds/maleficently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hatter hadn’t been able to cope with two co-existing realities, and she’d thought him weak.  This third may be the thing to finally break her mind in half; like an egg cracking on the side of a prep bowl, with everything sacred to her just dribbling out all over the place.</p><p>[Part 2 of a 3-part post-curse AU that mostly ignores Season 2 developments; see the notes for details.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few disclaimers: 
> 
> I contemplated this AU-version of Hook before the show made him exceptionally skeezy, and more importantly, this story deals with the same kind of consent issues that the canon premise of the 'curse' does (ie people don't consent to being put under these kinds of spells, and it's questionable to what extent their actions while they are 'cursed' could ever be consensual), and I'm very aware of those but some of the characters in the story may not be (much like they aren't on the show). I promise I'll deal with all resulting issues eventually (and by eventually I mean in the third part, if not here).
> 
> Enjoy the story (I hope)!

a future was lost yesterday  
  
the fatal plunge: part two

…

_In which the savior births a universe and the queen, too, is born again._

_…_

_a beginning_

_…_

_The first trimester of pregnancy is marked by an invisible — yet amazing — transformation.  
_ The Mayo Clinic

…

 _a future was lost yesterday  
_ _as easily and irretrievably  
_ _as a tennis ball at twilight_  
Sylvia Plath, “April 18”

_…_

_Do I dare  
_ _Disturb the universe?_  
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

…

 _Dying  
_ _Is an art, like everything else.  
_ _I do it exceptionally well._  
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”

…

 _Careful, be careful_  
 _This is where the world drops off_  
Matthew Good, “Weapon”


	2. Chapter 2

_The First Day_  
  
…  
  
When she finally stops asking increasingly frantic questions, interspersed with the occasional, “ _Get off me_ ”, it’s only because Henry pushes open the bedroom door without so much as a pause and, covering his ears with his hands, yells back, “What’s going on?  Mom, what are you--”  
  
“It’s okay, kid,” Emma says, fluidly pulling the sheet up to her chest.  “I think your mom just had a bad dream.   _Right_?”  
  
She’s pinned with a look of compulsion that the Emma Swan she knows wouldn’t have  _dared_ to direct at her, and it makes her want to laugh hysterically, like ants are crawling up her throat.  “Yes,” she manages, before looking at Henry.  He looks very,  _very_  real.  Not at all like he got caught in magic that was meant to evade his awareness altogether.  He’s obviously confused, but--and she swallows laughter, again--he’s definitely not alone there.  
  
She lets her knees land against the side of the bed again, and then runs a hand through her hair.  “Miss Swan frightened me, that’s all.”  
  
“Miss  _Swan_?” Henry echoes, frowning and then looking at Emma.  “Is this one of those weird grown-up things I’m not supposed to know about?”  
  
Emma turns a shade that would rather match the decor of the guest bedroom--providing it hasn’t changed, anyway--and then says, “Why don’t you go on ahead and make yourself some breakfast, okay, and we’ll be down in a little while?”  
  
“But  _Ma_ \--” Henry starts to say, but Emma hushes him with a snapped raise of her eyebrows, and he shuffles out of the door on his fuzzy slippers, closing the bedroom door behind him.  
  
Regina closes her eyes, squeezing her hands together at her sides.   _Something_ must have gone wrong in the design, if this is what she’s left with after Emma’s fervent wishes for happy endings.  God, whatever she’s woken up to just now isn’t even in the top  _five million_ of things that could possibly result in her being  _happy_.  
  
“Miss Swan-- _honestly_ ,” Emma says; when Regina looks over, the girl is rolling her eyes.  “When the hell was the last time you called me that?”  
  
“I really don’t know,” Regina says, her voice paper-thin.  
  
“Well, it was  _before_  Henry could make his own breakfast, that’s for sure,” Emma says, before laughing a little and then lifting the sheets up. “Seriously, get back here.  He knows better than to come back if I manage to talk you out of showering immediately.”  
  
If she does lie back down on the bed, it’s mostly to stop herself from collapsing onto the ground for some more impotent, hysterical screaming--but of course, that impulse hardly dissipates when Emma just rolls over and starts toying with one of the straps on her negligee.  
  
She’s saved from whatever comes after  _that_ by the loud vibration of Emma’s phone, somewhere on the other side of the bed, and the sheriff--the sheriff?--tosses onto her other side and grapples for the device, putting it up to her cheek with a loud yawn and then a, “‘lo?”  
  
Regina doesn’t dare to move again, as a half-sensible conversation with someone that she  _knows_  is Mary Margaret Blanchard takes place.  There isn’t any telling what  _else_ could go wrong here, if she so much as breathes in an unexpected direction.  Clearly, their casting has failed utterly; Emma has  _no_ recollection of who she is, and that’s ignoring that--  
  
She glances towards her walk-in closet and sees a collection of leather jackets hanging where her winter coats should be, sees three tall pairs of leather boots parked next to a familiar pair of black pumps, and...  _so_  many pairs of jeans.  One of them is on the floor at the foot of the bed, alongside a polka-dotted bra and matching underwear, and--  
  
“I  _know_ , I know,” Emma says, following her look and then rolling her eyes, as her hand covers her phone’s microphone.  “They’ll be in the hamper before I leave, ‘kay?  I promise.”  
  
Regina wills muscles in her face to move until the corners of her mouth lift, and then just gestures towards the ensuite; Emma nods and “Uh huh”s to her mother, and as Regina tugs the hem of her nightgown down and steadily walks over to the bathroom, one foot in plush carpeting at a time, she hears Emma say, “Oh, yeah--she’ll be there, even if I have to drag her.”  
  
There’s a slight comfort in the fact that even in  _this_  rewrite, she apparently can’t stand Mary Margaret Blanchard.  Slight comfort isn’t nearly enough, however.    
  
Flicking on the light with a carefully polished--and  _short_ , very short indeed--nail, she heads for the mirror and braces herself against the basin, staring at her own eyes.  She looks gunshot,  _wild_ , like Ruby Lucas on a full moon.  How on earth Emma isn’t picking up on the fact that she’s not  _okay,_ not even by the widest of margins, is anyone’s guess--but perhaps there is a certain lassitude that comes with the certainty of knowing that everything’s  _fine_.  That everything will  _always_  be fine.  
  
She turns on the cold tap and cups her hands underneath, before lowering her face; perhaps a baptism of sorts will shock her back into a reality where Emma and she both remember what they’ve done, where there’s a burden they have to share and not a  _bed_ they’re _sharing_.  
  
But no, all that happens is that the cold water stings her nose and cheeks, and then slips away between her fingertips.  When she glances up again, her eyelashes are wet and her nose is faintly red, but the rest of her looks no less haunted than she did four seconds ago.  
  
The padding of feet outside the bedroom alerts her to the fact that her short reprieve to think--as if she’d gotten that far--is about to end, and then Emma steps inside, now in a pair of yoga pants and one of those ratty wife-beaters that Regina can’t imagine she’s encouraged Emma to  _keep_ wearing, given the seeming state of their relationship.  She gets a lop-sided, carefree smile and a quick hip-check, as Emma reaches for the electrical toothbrush and caps on one of the brushes, dipping it under the tap and then slathering on some cool mint flavored toothpaste.  
  
Regina obviously has no idea what the sheriff used before, but this, too, seems like a concession for her sake; after a month of sampling all different varieties of toothpaste this world had to offer, that one had felt the most refreshing, like the brand new start she’d given herself upon wishing the world to Storybrooke.  She watches silently as Emma brushes--for not nearly the required two minutes--and then quickly spits, before lowering her mouth to the tap and wiping at her lips with her hand.  
  
“There,” she then says, spinning around and folding her arms over her chest.  “All clean.”  
  
It’s clearly a cue of some kind, and Regina clears her throat.  “I hadn’t gotten around to--”  
  
“Oh, please, it’s  _your_  hangup, not mine,” Emma tells her, and then pulls on the hem of her gown and …  
  
The fact that the last fifteen minutes have clearly signalled at her that something like this was coming has done  _nothing_  to prepare her for the reality of being kissed by her once arch-enemy.  Her hands lift of their own volition, as if to shove Emma away; it’s only with a last second adjustment, as she feels Emma’s hand wrap around her neck, a band of metal leaving a slightly cooler impression than her palm, that she manages to quell the urge to push.  
  
She’s lived with two realities in her head for so long now that it’s actually rather easy, to almost shut  _out_ this third one and think about their last moments in the other world some more, at least until Emma reaches down with her other hand and lifts the hem of her nightgown with so much familiarity that it chafes.  
  
As far as kisses go, she’s had worse.  Graham, perhaps unsurprisingly, had needed some conditioning; and as for Daniel, … no, that’s not a comparison she’s willing to entertain right now--and really, does the  _kissing_ matter when she ought to be thinking about this in terms of  _lives_?  
  
Emma disconnects with a wet little pop,  _bang_ , and then smirks a little.  “You’re  _so_  going to be late.”  
  
“I highly doubt that.  I’m never late,” Regina says, her eyes helplessly drifting from the obvious appreciation in Emma’s eyes to the wet princess-pink of her lips.  On a whim, she adds, “A quality you might want to adopt through osmosis.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Emma says, pressing one final quick kiss to the corner of her mouth.  “I’m going to go help Henry.  I’ll make pancakes?  Maybe we can all eat together before we head out?”  
  
“That sounds lovely,” Regina forces herself to say, as Emma smiles at her and leaves, wrapping herself in a fuzzy yellow robe that hangs on the inside of the bathroom door, right next to her own.  
  
On autopilot, she reaches for the toothbrush, replaces the yellow toothbrush head with the red one, and turns it on.  Her eyes shift along all the shelves in the bathroom, layered with products she’s never even  _heard_  of, and it’s only a mild consolation that apparently, the magic of Emma’s hair is less genetics and more Redken.  
  
Next to Emma’s hair products are a brand of tampons she’s never used, a few unpacked replacement razor blades for a Schick, and a portable iPod dock that has her frowning before realizing that Emma must like listening to music while taking baths.  As she turns the iPod in it on, though, she frowns again, because  _Miss Swan_ doesn’t seem the type to be appreciative of Paganini and Schubert and Philip Glass.  
  
She finishes brushing her teeth and looks in the medicine cabinet, finding anti-congestion medication she has no need of; hay fever tablets and Sudafed and a number of other things.  A red-nosed, sniffling Emma comes to mind, almost instantly, and she slams the cabinet back shut at the mere notion that such a visual might be slightly  _endearing_  on some level.  
  
Before she can extend her exploration to the bedroom, Henry’s voice rings up the stairs, and she runs her hands across her face, up and down, until she lowers her hands again and stares at the obvious engagement and wedding rings on the left one.  
  
Her first thought, so foolishly, is  _Daniel,_ because both bands are simple and inelegant--just  _present_ , as if saying,  _all that matters is that you’re mine_.  Daniel’s ring, however, is gone from all realities, and that leaves only one other alternative.    
  
The Hatter hadn’t been able to cope with two co-existing realities, and she’d thought him weak.  This third may be the thing to finally break  _her_ mind in half; like an egg cracking on the side of a prep bowl, with everything sacred to her just dribbling out all over the place.  
  
With one last glance in the mirror, she reaches for her own robe and then slowly makes her way down the stairs.  
  
…  
  
So little in her life has made sense since that day that she lost Daniel that this, too, will be something she simply learns to live with.  
  
Until she can remedy the wrongs, anyway.  In her first life, opportunity had been found in mirrors and snakes; in her second life, a misplaced turnover.  That desperate scramble, not thought through, cost her too dearly--and so in her third life, she will wait and observe.  
  
The sheriff is singing along to some motown--and somehow,  _that_  is the first thing that’s happened that’s actually surprised her to the point where she feels her face react, all morning--and flipping a pancake with a concentrated lack of care; Henry’s playing a PS Vita game of some kind at the kitchen table, and the table’s actually set for what appears to be a family meal.  
  
He looks up at her, pausing the game, and the overwhelming concern she has directed at her makes her pause in the doorway.  
  
“Are you okay now?” he asks.  
  
The idea of Henry asking-- _caring_  enough to bother asking--makes her reconsider the extent to which this  _isn’t_  actually exactly what she would’ve brought about, had her heart been the kind that still could make wishes for happiness.  
  
“I’m fine, dear,” she says, after a second, and then carefully approaches the table, sitting down when it’s apparent that Emma doesn’t seem to be expecting any help, and knows where she keeps the syrup and the cutlery and …  
  
Of course, she’d known some of those things  _before_  they cast the spell as well.  
  
A mug of coffee appears in front of her out of nowhere and then Emma just shoots her a look.  “What, not going to complain about my singing?”  
  
It’s good to know that apparently she  _can_.  “Give me a minute to wake up more and I’ll be sure to protest.”  
  
Something about the way that Henry reaches for his juice without any prompting and actually downs it, grimacing as the pulp goes down, makes her feel like she’s landed in a showroom of some kind.   _And now, to your left--the doting wife, the obedient son.  Yours, for the price of one heart, crushed into oblivion at the clocktower at noon!_  
  
She needs Rumpel.   _Now_.  
  
Before she can think on it any further, though, Henry puts his glass back down and then leans forward, whispering, “I think she’s been working on making shapes but they’re all really bad so maybe don’t say anything, okay?”  
  
She nods, after a few seconds of studying his eyes--so unscarred, here; they obviously haven’t seen a single thing that he’d rather forget--and then clears her throat.  “So--what are you doing in school today, Henry?”  
  
 _That_  can’t have changed as much as everything else has, and with the mechanical motions of drinking and eating and Henry talking about how he’s building a volcano for the science fair with his best friend to hide behind, the next thirty minutes pass by her without her needing to participate in them at all.  
  
…  
  
She’s still washing up when Emma’s done showering and just presses up to her back and kisses her on the corner of her mouth.  “I’m going to be late--well, I probably won’t see you until the meeting.”  
  
“Of course,” Regina says, because  _everything_  is now ‘of course’, at least until she can find Rumpelstiltskin and see if  _anyone_  other than her remembers a goddamned thing about their past lives.    
  
“Say hi to Killian for me.”  
  
Regina fumbles a mug and says, “I will--and you, to--”  
  
“I  _know_  you think she’s insipid, but Aurora’s a very good secretary, okay,” Emma calls out, as if this is a conversation they’ve had a thousand and one times and it always ends the same way.  
  
Regina stops moving altogether and then just wheezes out, “If you say so, dear”, right as the front door clicks shut behind Emma.  
  
Then, she takes a deep breath and heads to the study, where she catches sight of herself in the mirror again and then notices a set of light blue throw pillows on the sofa that she herself would have never, ever purchased.  
  
Emma is everywhere.  
  
…  
  
Yes,  _everywhere_.  
  
Showering had been another ten minute respite of not having to examine her new existence overly much--Emma, somehow, has improved the water pressure in the en suite, and it makes her laugh a little crazily for a few seconds, but soap remains soap--but now that she’s in the walk-in closet and looking at her suits, something is very wrong indeed.  
  
Nothing fits her.  
  
When she wanders into the bedroom again to look at the full-length mirror, it looks as though she’s wearing her father’s pants, but up top everything is far too tight for comfort--the button at the front of her blazer looks like it’s going to fly off if she so much as bends over to sign a permit, and after a few seconds of just staring at herself with a frown, a completely horrific thought strikes her.  
  
She wanders back into the closet and those familiar black pumps are …  _gone_.  
  
The only empty hangers in the entire closet are the ones she’s just emptied, and two more, right next to another suit.  
  
For a few seconds, she can’t bring herself to move at all, and then--  
  
…  
  
It takes her approximately thirty minutes to hang everything she’s torn down again, and by then she’s discovered that all the jeans in the closet barring five pairs are  _hers_.  
  
How Emma figured out her size is an idle query; what matters is that she’s not bereft of clothing altogether.  In fact, now that she’s calmed down enough--and frankly, doesn’t have the energy to throw another tantrum--she can accept that she’s looked... worse.  
  
The grandeur of her dresses of old is a world away from the skinny jeans and sleek leather boots that are apparently her designated apparel in this new reality, and Emma has at least done her courtesy of allowing her to still wear high-quality dress shirts, but even her jewelry box doesn’t contain what it used to.  Everything has been toned down to simple accessories; most of them in matching sets that, warily, she assumes to be anniversary presents and birthday presents--one for each occasion in the year.  
  
She’s apparently not going to be encouraged to wear gold here, no matter how much better it suits her complexion.  Whatever motivated that choice is anyone’s guess,  but she clasps a plain chain around her neck and matches it with a pair of angular hoop earrings, and then looks at herself in the mirror one last time.  
  
Nearly sixty five; she looks at best like she’s in her late twenties.  
  
The ringing of the phone actually has her jump, as if she’s never heard a phone ring before; as if such things didn’t happen in her old reality.  One of the various handsets is on Emma’s side of the bed--and of  _course_  she cringes as she thinks it, and then scowls when Emma’s reimagining apparently hasn’t made her considerate enough to bother  _making_  the bed before she leaves--and she reaches for it warily, answering with a curt, “Hello” after a second.  
  
“Regina, love, where the hell  _are you_?” someone asks her.  
  
It takes her a few seconds, and then she carefully asks, “Killian?"  
  
“No, it’s  _the Pope_ ,” he responds.  “I have both of our mounts saddled and you were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.   You’re never late; are you okay?”  
  
She presses her fist against her forehead and then clears her throat.  “Henry had a minor fever this morning, and you know how--well, Emma had to go to work, so--”  
  
“Ah,” is all he says, so apparently this isn’t uncommon.  “Are you staying home?”  
  
“I think--yes.  I think I might just take the day off, if that’s all right,” she says, after a few seconds.  “I know I don’t usually--”  
  
“ _Usually?_ You haven’t taken a day off in the entire time I’ve known you.”  
  
“Well, I’m sure you’ll manage,” she says, words tripping off her tongue.  
  
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, given that I’ve slaved for you for nearly a decade-- _really_ ,” he says, before laughing softly.  “See you at the meeting tonight.”  
  
“Right,” she says, hanging up and carefully putting the phone down again.  
  
…  
  
Even though the desk in the study is obviously not hers, the bookcase behind it contains several binders that are labelled  _Stables_ and before she even lifts the first one, she suspects she knows what she’s going to find.  
  
The third binder, a glossy black, contains a will that leaves her the entire equestrian center after her mother’s unfortunate demise;  _years_  ago.  Before Henry’s birth, even.  It’s an unexpected change, but not necessarily an unwanted one; she doesn’t have to guess what motivated Emma to ensure that Henry would have no memories of Cora Mills at all.    
  
Death is death; the timing of it hardly matters, in rewriting the whole world.  
  
The binders answer a question about what it is she  _does_  here, at least, but not so much about what Emma does, though given that it involves suits, heels, early working hours and public meetings, she realizes that the answer is actually right  _there_  and maybe--  
  
Maybe she’d rather  _not_ know, just yet.  
  
She closes the binder again and wanders through the entire house once more, getting a semblance of her bearings, before finding a set of keys and a cell phone that has to be hers--as all the other ones are gone from the house.  Finding that her keychain at least has one key to a Mercedes is a relief; one that ends as soon as she’s locked up behind her and finds that there’s a  _jeep_  of some kind in the driveway, waiting for her.  
  
The notion that Emma is punishing her for her transgressions sits heavy in her stomach, but then she recalls the way that Henry had pecked her on the cheek before running for the school bus and knows that this isn't meant to be a punishment.  
  
Malicious, Emma and her ilk are not.    
  
It’s much more likely that Emma just had  _no idea_  what she was doing and, for lack of a better way to put it, haphazardly improvised  _everything_  about their lives in those scant seconds before Henry had knocked apart their hands.  
  
…  
  
The pawn shop is a pet store.  
  
She stares at its display windows for a long moment and then presses her hands against her head, flinching at the hard-wearing riding gloves that chafe against her skin.  Eyes closed, she can barely remember what she’s wearing and almost feels like herself again.  Not Emma’s version of who she is supposed to be; and  _God_ , that book really highlighted all the most insipid parts and none of the most relevant ones.   _Once there was a girl named Regina who rode her horse_.  It left off the part where she’d been flung off of it by her mother, over and over, until she could no longer look at the horse without feeling resentful.  
  
After a few deep breaths, she opens her eyes again, but the pawn shop is still a pet store; rabbits cost ten dollars, apparently, and there is a huge aquarium with bright fishes that she knows Henry probably stops to stare at , often, given his fondness of his lava lamp.  She knows she’s staring at the name painted on the wooden sign above the door-- _The Blue Bird_ \--for a little too long when a small bell rings above the door and out steps her …  
  
Her son’s grandfather.  
  
Her father-in-law?  
  
 _Prince James_.  Very much alive.  Healthy, even; pink-cheeked and light-eyed.  
  
“Regina.  Are you all right?” he asks.  
  
She balks at the question before she can help it, but snaps her jaw shut over the  _what’s it to you, Charming?_ that wants to follow.  He’s not  _Charming_ , here.  He’s David Nolan.  He owns a pet store.  On his left hand is a thick gold wedding band.  His hair is not cropped short, and he’s wearing a comfortable-looking plaid shirt and a pair of jeans that make him look every bit the shepherd he once was, again.  
  
Emma’s gift to him, apparently, revolved around his love of animals.  Another instance of the book at play:  _Once there was an honest shepherd of humble beginnings, who loved none more than his mother and his herd._  
  
“I’m fine, just having a small dizzy spell,” she tells him, keeping her hand pressed to her temple for dramatic effect.  “I--hmm--”  
  
“Well, come on in, take a seat until it passes,” he says, friendly but not  _overly_  so.  As if they’ve socialized, sporadically, but he doesn’t consider her anything other than a close acquaintance.  
  
It’s for the best.  If she has to be overly solicitous to one more person who would like to see her dead today, her mind is likely to implode.  
  
He holds the door open for her and inside, the humid, thick air of an environment full of things that give off heat and breathe hits her--though he has a fan set up by the register, and moving towards it, the oppressive atmosphere gets a little more bearable.    
  
She pauses at the sight of a smaller fish bowl, set on the counter, and as soon as David says, “I was going to call you after work today--what do you think?”, she knows she’s looking at a gift for Henry.  One she picked out, perhaps; one Emma picked out.  Either way, the bowl contains two black and yellow triangular fish, streaking sideways between stringy little weeds that sift up from a base full of pebbles, and she finds staring at them almost hypnotic.  
  
“Very exotic,” she says.  
  
“Oh, you have no idea,” David says, with a boyish grin, before hitting the light switch on the back wall behind him.    
  
The fish  _glow_ , instantaneously, and Regina actually gasps like she’s never held a heart in her hand; like this is what magic is  _like_.    
  
“Beautiful,” she murmurs, and that isn’t a lie.  They seem precious, like the unicorns of this realm.  She’s always enjoyed treasure as a side-effect of  _winning_ , and this is a gift for her son, so it fits that it seems the most rare of all.  
  
“They’re not cheap, but--”  
  
“Oh, money is no object,” she says, before having to hide a frown because--she has no idea if that’s actually  _true_  or not.  Storybrooke’s economy is probably no longer magical, if the modest garments David is wearing are anything to go by, and at that point, a public salary and whatever is left after expenses are paid on the equestrian center-- _God_ , the real term cost of  _horses_  alone is enough to make her want to call Emma immediately and ask for the details on their financial situation.  
  
David saves her, however, by saying, “Yeah, Emma said the same thing when I placed the order.  Anyway--she figured you’d want to hide these little fellas out by the stables until you’re ready to give them to him--I’ll give you some instructions on how they’re to be fed, if that’s okay.  I just don’t really have the space to--”  
  
“That’ll be fine.  I’m sure I can manage,” she says, before reaching into her purse for her wallet.  
  
It only occurs to her that it might not  _be_  there when she’s already found it, and is then flipping it open, staring blankly at her own driving license-- _Regina Swan,_ thirty four once more, and since Emma has no idea of what to do with a  _heel,_ much taller than she actually is--and then reaching for a credit card.    
  
Her signature, thankfully, has somehow carried over.  
  
Magic is a  _miserable_  art, she thinks, as Snow’s consort swipes her AmEx and then hands her a pen to sign with.  A miserable art that’s now lost to her, and she can only think of one way to potentially get it back.  
  
“Hm.  … I don’t suppose you’ve seen Mr. Gold lately?” she asks, as casually as she can.  
  
“Not really a regular in the shop,” David says, tapping his fingers against the counter.  “But...  I actually ran into him at the diner today.  Rumor has it he’s going on vacation--but don’t worry, Belle talked to Aurora and she’s manning the library part-time.  I’m pretty sure Emma already signed off on that, actually.”  
  
“ _I’m sure she did,_ ” Regina murmurs, sliding the receipt back to David and closing her wallet up again, offering him an artificial smile.  “Well.  I’d better catch him before he goes.”  
  
She gets handed the fishbowl a second later, and then David says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, “See you tonight, I guess.”  
  
“Tonight?” Regina asks, almost placid now.   _Everyone_  appears to be going to this event, however, so perhaps it won’t require her to do anything other than  _sit_.  
  
“The town meeting about the new school building.  Mary Margaret’s been working on it for months and she  _really_  wants to get it through before she--”  He stops abruptly and blushes faintly, but the lingering joy in his eyes is so complete that Regina doesn’t need him to complete the sentence.  “As soon as possible.”  
  
“Ah.  Well, given that I’m not a member of the council--”  
  
David grins.  “Yeah, I tried that line of reasoning as well, but apparently if we show up in support, the other council members are more likely to be persuaded.”  He leans forward, hands flat on the counter, and then conspiratorially says, “I hate the politics too, you know.  Maybe we can sit together and entertain each other.”  
  
There are  _so_ few things about this world that make sense, but she trundles on, smiling weakly.  “Allies, then.”  
  
He presses a finger to his lips, as if swearing her to keep this meaningless secret, and she attempts to leave his shop without looking like she’s fleeing it.  
  
…  
  
The library is as it has always been--not boarded up, of course, but the building hasn’t been modified in any way and the layout of the shelves remains intact.  
  
Emma had barely ever been inside of it, meaning that this is  _hers_ , still; her memories, her decorations, her volumes filling the shelves.  
  
“Regina,” Belle says, from behind the checkout counter, before smiling at her broadly.  “One second, I have your hold right here.”  
  
“Actually--is … Elias here?” Regina asks, as Belle ducks down and starts audibly rummaging through piles of books.  “I was hoping to catch him before you--”  
  
“Oh, before we go on vacation--of course,” Belle says, straightening again and handing her a Maeve Binchy novel.  “Well, here you are anyway--and he’s in the back, with the microfiches.  I don’t know what it was, but he woke up this morning and wanted to know about the town’s history and you know how the Mayor is--everything gets preserved, no matter how badly we could use the space for more books.”  
  
“Of course,” Regina says, plastering on a passable smile and then holding up the novel.  “Thank you for this.”  
  
“You’ll love it; it’s  _really_  romantic,” Belle tells her, almost encouragingly.  
  
“Hm, lovely,” Regina agrees, and just about manages to turn away from Belle before giving in to the grimace that she’s been fighting off all day.  The only respite she’s had since leaving the house was picking up the fish now sitting on the passenger seat of the jeep, but she knows that unless she makes it to the back of the library post-haste and finds someone there who actually  _knows who she is,_ she will lose the surprisingly edible pancakes that her  _wife_ \--  
  
She closes her eyes and counts to five and then continues walking, pushing open the door marked  _Archive_  at the end of the Historical Romance aisle and letting it fall shut behind her.  
  
Rumpel looks away from the document reader.  “Ah, Regina.  I was wondering--”  
  
“ _What is your name?”_ she demands, before he can say anything else.  
  
He stares at her blankly for a few seconds and then says, “Are you quite all right, dearie?”  
  
“Oh my  _God_ ,” she manages, before gripping her hair with her hands.  “This cannot actually be happening.”  
  
“Here, sit down,” he says, pushing the spare stool in the room towards her.  “We wouldn’t want you falling down and hurting yourself.”  
  
She can’t remember the last time she cried in sheer helplessness; her teens, probably.  It would have been on account of her mother, it can’t have been anything else, but it’s going to happen to her now and in front of  _him_  of all people.  
  
He blankly looks at her for a few seconds, and then says, “Fascinating readings, these archives.”  
  
“I don’t  _care_  about the town’s history; in fact, if you had any idea at all about who you actually  _were_  you would recall that I  _invented_  the town’s history--”  
  
“Ah, but she’s made a few changes, hasn’t she?  Our  _savior_ ,” Rumpelstiltskin says.  
  
She freezes, and then lets go of the strands of hair she’s now almost pulling  _out_  of her head.  The urge to cast something hideous at him is overwhelming, but the most her hands are capable of right now are a much more pedestrian  _regular_  throttling.  
  
He laughs, after a second, and says, “Tell me,Regina, what is your new life like?  I apparently own the  _travel agency_ , if you can believe that.  It’ll be closed until further notice, but even so.  Title and deed, both in my name.”  
  
“Perhaps it’s a subtle hint that she’d like you to leave town,” Regina says, before looking at the document reader; the image frozen on it isn’t familiar to her, at all, and she cannot immediately see what it is that has interested him.  
  
“Well, this is  _her world_ , so why not?  Why not give her what she wants,” he says, sounding as lighthearted as he ever has, before spinning on his stool and facing her fully.  “So what  _does_  she want, for you?  Short of neutering you once and for all.”  
  
Trauma does interesting things to the mind, she’s always found, and in this particular instance her entire world limits itself to this room, where they can casually talk about the three lives they’ve lived-- _four,_ in his case--as if they’re nothing but a particular nasty occurrence of deja-vu.  
  
“I can’t say that neutering was at the forefront of her mind,” she says, after a moment, and then laughs, once.  Then a second time, until she can’t seem to stop laughing at all.  
  
Rumpel studies her quietly as she gets a grip, and then, as she covers her mouth with her left hand, catches the gleaming on her finger and also slowly starts to grin.  
  
“ _No_.”  
  
“Oh, yes,” she says, looking at the rings again and then returning her hands to her lap.  “She made pancakes this morning, after attempting a  _quickie_  before breakfast, because--here’s the true delight--”  
  
“ _She_  doesn’t  _remember,_ ” Rumpel says, slowly, and then giggles so loudly that it echoes through the room.  “The boy, running into the spell.  He must’ve altered the outcomes.  Magic’s a delicate art, you and I know it better than most.”  
  
“Yes.  Perhaps it was Henry.  Or perhaps she just wished she wouldn’t remember,” Regina says, running a hand through her hair again and looking back at the boxes full of fiche on the desk.  “It’s hard to say, but she’s of no use to us in  _undoing_  what she’s done.  As far as she’s concerned, everything is fine.”  
  
Rumpel spins back to the desk and then pulls out a new sheet of fiche.  “So you know, and I know.  It’s funny how so much changes and yet we always end up in the same place, isn’t it.  Makes you  _wonder_.”  
  
“We need to figure out a way to fix what--”  
  
“No, I rather think not,” Rumpel says, before lifting the fiche to the overhead halogen bulb and smiling at it faintly.  “Aha! I appear to have found your wedding; my, you look--overjoyed to be marrying her.  And there’s your boy--ring-bearer, how  _charming_.”  He laughs again, that high-pitched inhuman sound, and then looks back at her.  “I have what I wanted, dearie.  There isn’t anything to  _fix_ here; my Belle loves me and cannot remember a time when I could not love her, and the boundary is gone.”  
  
“You’re sure?” she asks, and he smiles in a way that makes his eyes twinkle, like some benign grandfather figure who really  _doesn’t_ wish to hurt her.  
  
“Quite,” he says, before licking at his lips and looking at his own hand, twisting it every which way.  “She’s abolished  _all_  the curses, and that  after such an extended period of over-achieving in the first place!  Truly, I thought  _you_ would be the one to come begging for another  _spell,_ more magic to whitewash that which you’d destroyed with the curse before, but no.”  
  
He says it so casually, with a light shrug,  that it takes her a second to even realize what he’s just implied.    
  
The statement, when it hits, is staggering, and she swallows before staring him down.  “What are you saying--this was all part of one of your schemes?”  
  
“Well now, that’s not a very nice thing to accuse me of,” he says, clicking the document reader off.  “You really should look at these yourself--you’ll find them--”  
  
“You  _used us_.  This--what have you had us  _do_?” she demands from him now, slowly rising to her feet.  
  
He looks at her, unimpressed, and says, “Nothing you didn’t  _want_  to, dearie.  All I did was make a spell that would end all curses; had you never asked for it, I would’ve found another way to leave town.”  
  
“And now what?” she asks, feeling her entire body start to shake with remnants of magic that doesn’t exist,  _here_ ; splinters of magic that she cannot use.  It just feels like she’s about to explode.  “Now--”  
  
“Now--my name is  _meaningless_ , and we owe each other nothing, not anymore.”  He clucks his tongue, loudly, and then looks up at her.  “This was what we wanted.   _All_ of us.  We had the same end goal in mind.”  
  
It’s a ludicrous thing for him to claim.  “She and I did this for  _our son_.  You don’t care about Henry--”  
  
“No,” he says, sobering abruptly.  “I care not at all about  _your_  son, no.”  
  
The hair at the back of her neck prickles, and she feels herself deflate.  “ _That’s_  what this has all been about?”  
  
“That’s  _all,_ you mean _?_  Of all people, you should know better than to call it  _minor,_ Regina.  We build and destroy entire universes for them, our children.  Our love for them is the thing that ultimately dictates all of our actions,” he says, his face tightening briefly.  “Yours, Snow White’s,  _Emma’s_ , and yes-- _mine_.  Always mine.  Since long before I became the Dark One, and it will continue to do so now that, well, it appears I am no longer him.”  
  
She closes her eyes and sinks back down onto the stool.  “You have no power left.”  
  
“No,” he agrees, and then runs his hand past the leg of his pin-striped suit, before curling it into a loose fist.  “It has taken me a very long time indeed, to realize that  _power_  isn’t what I need to get what I want.”  
  
Her stomach twists anxiously, and she says, “That may be, but  _I_  need--”  
  
“Oh, Regina, you silly, silly girl,” he says, and reaches for her; brushes some hair out of her face.  “What  _you_  need to remember is who you once were.”  
  
He lets the lock of hair sink back into her eyes, and then leans back, before shrugging lightly.  
  
“Who knows.  Perhaps your new  _wife_  and your son will appreciate you for it.”  
  
Nausea starts a slow, steady climb up her esophagus.  “Rumpelstiltskin,  _please_ , if you know  _any_  way out of--”  
  
He tuts and shakes his head.  “Out of what?  Out of a life of  _love_?  That’s what she’s trapped you in, dearie, and if I were you I’d try to get used to it; with her comes the boy, with the boy comes--well.   _Happiness,_ if you think you can still manage it.  And you and I--we have nothing to offer each other anymore.  Can you not feel it--that our story is  _finally_  done?”  
  
There is something hopeful and giving on his face, and she realizes, the longer she stares at it, that the monster that lurked behind his eyes  _always_  is gone now.  He’ll never be able to forget what he was, once, but the burden no longer weighs on him, swallowing him whole no matter what his intentions are.  
  
And his parting gift, to her, is the freedom to be whoever Emma Swan wants her to be.  
  
“My whole life,” she sighs, and he nods, before pushing up to his feet.  
  
“It  _truly_ wasn’t personal,” he tells her, before pointing his cane at the document reader.  “That, on the other hand, is.  I can sense something powerful about the fiches, but whatever is buried inside of those images will not reveal itself to me.  Perhaps the savior left  _you_  a clue, hm?”  
  
She says nothing else as he heads for the door, nor as he pushes the handle open and then disappears back into the library; it seems that there is very little left that she actually knows, let alone that she can say.  
  
…  
  
The microfiches are arranged per year; thirty-four stacks of thirty-six slides that she cannot read without the document reader.  Perhaps it’s too needlessly pedantic, but she starts with the one marked  _1978_  and slides it in place until it gently clicks.  
  
Turning on the power to the reader again produces a low hum and the strangest sensation of some unseen power about to burst out through the screen, but all that happens in reality is that the display glows green for a few seconds and then waits for her to start winding.  
  
She frowns, but has little else to do for the time being--short of avoiding Emma Swan for the rest of her existence, which wouldn’t even qualify as a plan in  _Henry’s_  mind--and so reaches for the dial.  
  
The second she touches it--  
  
 _her father loves her--throws her high in the air but he always catches--the smell of apples and roses--mother and father and a baby in a house by the stables--yellow roses and--_  
  
She jerks her hand away and stares at the document reader as if it’s going to explain to her, out loud, what it just did.    
  
Not that it  _needs_  to.    
  
Carefully, she removes the first set of fiches and sets it to the side, reaching for the box and flipping through it slowly.  At  _1984_  she pauses; it’s the year in which Emma was born, by this world’s calendar.  
  
The new fiche snags before she manages to smooth it out under the reader’s lens, and this time she forces herself to take a deep breath before reaching for the dial, readying herself for another burst of superimposed memories; they will have to slot into the one remaining corner of her mind that isn’t overflowing with information yet and reside there, like long-lost friends.  
  
\-- _”just left at the convent”--the blanket is white and the baby is a girl and she is late for her horse riding lessons with Kathryn and Killian and when she is older her father will show her how to jump--the baby is with the nuns now nun Astrid is a nice nun and then there is Mother Superior who is not nice but--the baby cries a lot it came in a white blanket they name her Emma her last name is--she skins her knees on the road by her house but her father lifts her--her mother sings to her sometimes she learns to sing as well she’s very good at singing and someday riding and right now arithmetic and sometimes--and one day she will own a grown up horse and when she does she will name her horse Rocinante which is from a book that her father reads to her it’s named Don Quick Shot and--Killian is better at running fast than she is but she hides better always--but--the baby is in a white blanket her name is Emma her last name is Swan--_  
  
Lurching backwards, she covers her mouth with her hand and sucks in as much air as she can, but the experience is an unstoppable type of dizzying, like being tossed around a vacuum chamber and left on the ceiling when the door opens again.    
  
The facts, on the other hand, are plain once they settle.  In this world, she has known Emma her entire life.  Since she was six years old.  Regina’s mother sang with her and her father taught her how to ride.  She’s best friends with Kathryn Nolan and Killian Jones and has been since she was--  
  
She doesn’t know.  It must’ve happened before 1984.  
  
She closes her eyes briefly and reaches for 1994; she would’ve been sixteen, then, and Emma would’ve been ten years old.  Those are ages at which cogent decisions can be made, as Henry has demonstrated with his trip to Boston; everything between 1984 and 1994 accounts for very little of the shape their life has taken.  Those fiches will be akin to the guest bedroom; full, but not with meaning.  
  
 _“Mary Margaret wants private tuition, Regina, and I said--” “Okay that sounds great” “Hi Regina” “Hi Mary Margaret” “Hi”--her name is Emma Swan and she’s being raised by the nuns and Regina is in high school and Emma is in elementary school so they don’t really know each other but she remembers when the baby came to town and it felt really strange because someone just left a baby she could never imagine just leaving a baby like that she loves babies and--Daniel loves her, he does, he just doesn’t want to risk losing his job so they’re car eful but every time looks at him she just wants to kiss him and--Emma Swan at the stables oh because Mary Margaret is her best friend and she’s getting private lessons--Mary Margaret’s mother died it’s really sad and Emma Swan doesn’t have a mother either and Daniel has--they’re so in love they’re going to be together forever even if Killian thinks it’s gross to say that when she’s only sixteen but what does he know he’s never had what they have because Ruby won’t even look at him twice she likes Mary Margaret more but she’s young and why is Emma Swan at the stables she doesn’t have the money for lessons “Don’t be ungracious Regina dear she has nothing and we will let her ride” “Okay” “Do you want to meet my horse Emma” “Okay I guess” --she looks like a sack of potatoes but Daniel can show her how to ride and--_  
  
1995 starts on much the same note but then  
  
\-- _oh God they’re going to do it they’re actually going to--her mother doesn’t know that she’s out this late but it’s okay I’ll bring you back home safe Daniel promises and he never lies and he spreads out the blanket and then pulls off his shirt and reaches for her coat and the buttons fall to the wayside like they’re just a part of her imagination but she never could’ve imagined how good--oh--_  
  
Her hand slips and she closes her eyes, squeezing them shut for a few seconds, not even daring to breathe.  
  
Whatever Emma has done, this is--it’s not  _real_.  It’s not real.  That never happened, and even if it had, Emma would’ve had no way of knowing these details, but in this world--  
  
In this world, Mary Margaret Blanchard adores her for all the riding lessons she gave her as a teenager, and Emma Swan was the town’s communal child for years on end, and Daniel loved her so much that  _everyone_  knew and  _nobody_  cared.  
  
She only barely manages to reach for the wastebasket under the desk before she starts throwing up, and then just rides it out, until there’s nothing left.  
  
…  
  
1996 and 1997 are blindingly happy, utterly unbearable in every way, and she shuts them off before she can see too much.  Emma should not have been able to construct these years, though perhaps it’s her own mind that’s filling in the blanks of what Daniel looked like and smelled like; her own mind showing her a young Snow, looking at her with gentled worship, as if this Regina isn’t capable of any of the horrors the actual Regina knowingly has inflicted.  
  
Her father passes first, in 1998; it’s mere static, an empty slide that segues to a period of grief with  _support_.  Nothing about it had been terribly alone, in Emma’s imaginations; Kathryn and Killian had gotten her blisteringly drunk while she had been at university, somewhere in Boston, and the funeral had been beautiful.  Her mother had cried and they’d all remembered a great man.  A good father, a great man.    
  
Her mother follows shortly after, and she, too, gets a fond send-off; Regina herself toasts at the funeral to a woman who always encouraged her to  _follow her heart_ , which must be Emma’s idea of a joke.  
  
In the archive room, Regina has nothing left to purge, and simply carries on.  
  
In 1999, she gets engaged to the love of her life-- _even here,_ it’s all he’ll ever be--and graduates the unnamed Bostonian university and moves back to Storybrooke and, with Killian’s help, joins Daniel in managing the equestrian centre.  They ride and laugh and dance late into the evenings and settle on wallpaper for their house and consider the names of the children they both want.  They spend their early evenings teaching each other how to cook, and they speak of their children’s names and he suggests  _Henry_  and she loves him so much that it’s as if her entire reason for being has been stripped down to a single, magical strand of his hair, plugged in a bottle for her to carry with her for eternity.  
  
In 2000, they marry; in 2001, he dies, and in 2012 in the archive room she cries as if it’s new, because it  _is_.  This is a Daniel she had a life with, who left her bereft of much more than merely an ideal, and he left her in a world where she cannot make desperate bargains with ill-advised allies to find a way to bring him  _back_.  He goes under the soil, lower lower and lower still, and Kathryn and Killian hold her upright and tell her that she’s not alone, she’ll  _never_  be alone, and she thinks of the baby that they’ll never have and stares at Emma Swan across the aisle, somber and contrite and no longer such a child; no, she’s now a real person in her own right, coming to terms with the notion that not all good things last, not even for good people.  
  
By the end of 2001, Regina has her stables and little else in her life.  Mary Margaret comes by at least three times a week and Killian forces her out to dinner and Kathryn stops by her  _de facto_  office with bagged lunches, but it’s all just time moving along.  Emma comes and works in the stables, laughing with Killian about his hamfisted, ineffectual attempts to woo Ruby Lucas; though the girl falls silent and stares helplessly at Regina every time she wanders by.  The town orphan pities the remnant ghost of the woman who had once had so much, and is left with so little; as if happiness is in fact that fleeting, and should be chased down and tackled, kept firm, before it evaporates altogether.  
  
Earlier that year, before the bottom of Regina’s pointed slump is even in sight, Emma thinks of a funeral and the notion that nothing lasts forever, and decides that this will not be her fate; she convinces herself that love is something to search for, not something to be surprised by, and so when a traveling salesman named Neal Cassidy stops by in town and plays a few games of darts with Killian and asks for the best place to have breakfast in the morning, they disappear together for a few hours.  Regina watches those memories skim by--out of sequence, in flashes--with an imbedded hint of nostalgia, a latent fondness that she suspects isn’t at  _all_  at the root of Henry’s actual conception.    
  
What  _does_  feel emotionally genuine is the frantic knocking on her door at three in the morning, in early December, with Emma crying and saying, “What do I do?”, as if Regina is the only true adult left in her life--next to the nuns that she obviously cannot talk to about the terrible mistake she’s made, the mistake that now pulses dimly in her belly and will eventually grow into a child that is at the heart of  _all_  of this, real and imagined.    
  
The conversation is jumbled and frantic, hysterical and  _profoundly_ unbelievable, but they end up here, by Emma’s express wishes up in the clocktower at noon:  
  
 _I don’t want to give him up but I don’t know that I can raise him I’m not ready to have a baby Regina and you and Daniel you always wanted kids I know you’re lonely I know you miss him and I know you would take such good care of this kid so--oh God I can’t ask you to do this--I’m sorry--I’ll just go, this is so not your problem and you’re just my boss’s boss and--_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
 _… yes?_  
  
 _Yes._  
  
By 2002, she’s twenty four.  Emma is eighteen, scholarshipped and packed and ready to go, and they stare at the baby together and Emma asks,  _Will he forget about me?_ and Regina says,  _no, dear, of course not; you will never not be in his life_.  The navy-blue ink on the adoption papers is still drying in the study of the new house she’s moved into, after selling her parents’ place and thinking of a large back yard, how Henry will be able to practice playing soccer or baseball or whatever it is that little boys do, there; an answer that Emma’s mind had been unable to supply, it seems.  
  
Emma cries for the entire four hour drive to Boston and gets through her degree in a way that seems automated, as much of her time is spent benefiting from the terms of the adoption and driving back to Storybrooke to see Henry, who knows her only as Emma, because that seems like the best way to handle their unusual situation in 2003, and 2004, and 2005.    
  
2006 marks the year that Emma moves back to Storybrooke and that Henry starts attending pre-school; his teacher, the freshly qualified Mary Margaret Blanchard, thinks he is possibly the brightest boy she’s ever encountered, and Regina finds that she agrees completely.  Emma takes up a job in the town’s planning department and moves in with Ruby Lucas and Mary Margaret Blanchard, focusing on little but compensating for the fact that she had Henry at the wrong age and with the wrong man; she compensates by working harder, working longer hours, and restricting her entire life to a job and visits to Regina’s house.  
  
In this revisionist history of their existences, it appears that everyone is celibate; in 2007, Mary Margaret and David meet at a book club and start dating, but the most they ever do in Emma’s mind is hold hands, which is the first thing Regina has had to be absorb in hours that has actually made her  _not_  feel like she’s being split at the seams.    
  
In 2007, Killian continues to pursue Ruby, who lets half the town pursue her until Emma points out that she could do a lot worse than to give Killian Jones a chance:  
  
 _Worse like Neal Cassidy?--No he’s nothing like Neal Cassidy not that Neal was the worst or anything, he just, well, we didn’t have it--what do you mean it?--that thing that people have, the true love thing--oh like Mary Margaret and David--yeah and like Regina and Daniel--do you think she’ll ever find someone again?--God I hope so, she’s too young to just tap out forever--and hot--oh my God Ruby--what I’m just saying--yeah well don’t she’s Henry’s mother--you’re Henry’s mother and you’re also hot--I don’t know why I talk to you sometimes--because I call it like I see it, you’re both hot and you’re both Henry’s mothers, so you might as well--okay seriously stop it, and for the record, she’s Henry’s mother, I’m just his--Emma_  
  
 _\--oh, hey Regina, i s everything okay--yes, dear, I just had a question--okay--do you have any plans for Christmas Eve yet this year--oh uh I don’t know I guess soup kitchen you know that Sister Astrid always needs a few more hands--oh, I see--why did um uh--it’s nothing, Henry and I just thought--Henry thought?  Henry is five years old--yes and he’s quite capable of vocalizing his own desires for the holiday season, as you should know by the list of items he dictated to Santa last week--well yeah so what are you saying that he’d like me to spend Christmas with you two--yes, in short--okay and you don’t think that’ll be weird--why would it be weird, Miss Swan?--I don’t know because Christmas is a family holiday and we’re not really--we are in his eyes--oh--but if you’re otherwise occupied--no that’s um well I’ve never really done family Christmas before, how does it work?_  
  
The memories of that Christmas are brighter than they have any business being, but they light up the inside of Regina’s head; Henry laughing and being more gracious than any five year old would be about the amount of presents he’s given, and Emma helping out with making a roast dinner in a way that Regina  _strongly_  suspects the actual twenty-three year old Emma Swan wouldn’t have been able to, and then there is a quiet evening spent together, watching old Christmas movies and talking slightly stiltedly about the people that should be but aren’t there.  
  
It’s somehow  _still_  a surprise when in 2007, Emma picks up one of those awful leather jackets and starts haphazardly tucking a scarf into the front of it, circa eleven forty five, cheeks a little pink from wine she’s finally old enough to drink, and Regina has to watch herself say,  _Are you sure you’ll be alright to get home?_ and has to watch Emma say,  _Yeah, I’m fine, just--thanks for having me.  I really appreciate it, the way you’re letting me be a part of his life, and... yours, I guess,_ which is followed by a period of silent staring that doesn’t seem like it will lead anywhere, until the fiche crackles and shimmers for a second and next thing she knows (in a literal sense, because she’s sitting in the archive room, mutely letting herself  _know_  all of this)  
  
 _oh my God Regina what--I don’t know, do you want me to stop--no, don’t stop, don’t--be quiet, Henry is just across the hall--I’m trying but--hmmphh h--_  
  
She watches as Emma sprawls on her bed, hair strewn across all the pillows with hands reaching and eyes shuttering and lips swollen, bloodied almost, while she herself is setting on a path of complete destruction; no single landmark on the map that is Emma’s skin escapes her attention.  It’s a bruised and violent kind of affection that she watches herself act out, and it’s shocking, how much emotion is wrapped up into this single encounter, as if she’s making up for years and years of missing  _him_ as well as the singular year of hating everything about Emma Swan’s presence in her life all at once.  
  
It’s  _not_ shocking that Emma likes it--likes the way she’s being held on the edge, absolved of any and all responsibility for her own pleasure here, just hovering over the fulfillment of something she has wanted since 2001-- _Neal Cassidy, the back of his car, hands pressed up against the roof and feet mashed against a window as he says God Emma you’re so pretty, you’re so fucking beautiful--_ and is now finally-- _oh holy fuck Regina, don’t stop, oh--oh--_ reaching, with one of her own hands covering her mouth and every individual muscle in her body pulling tight as something inside of her  
  
breaks.  
  
…  
  
She can imagine the rest; the reluctant transition from dating to moving in together to explaining their situation to Henry to finally, the culmination of the whole ordeal with the two rings.  There will be slides that will suggest to her that Emma gives as good as she gets, and others that might imply that there is more to their relationship than this almost blind, cataclysmic passion that she’s just witnessed, too astonished to look away.    
  
There will be memories of doing things with Henry as a family; of talking to each other about mundane aspects of their days, and plans for the future.  Family vacations, since nothing binds them to Storybrooke.  Henry at Disneyland, laughing at Mickey Mouse; Emma wearing mouse ears because there is no need for her to be act so tough and disinterested in this world.  She herself with a camera, documenting neatly.  
  
She can imagine it all, purely based on what Emma had envisioned her relationship with Daniel to be like; and already, those false memories are twisting and arcing around everything that she remembers to be real: the stables, the way they’d had to sneak to get even a moment together, the way she’d never done much more than kiss him and think  _someday, always_.  
  
It’s unclear how long she’s been sitting there when a knock finally sounds on the door and Belle pokes her head around the corner, with a soft, “Hey--you’ve been here all day, are you okay?”  
  
“I’m--” Regina starts to say, and then just covers her mouth with her hand and pushes up off the stool.  “Yes.  Just--lost in memories.”  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Belle says, with a sympathetic little smile that makes Regina want to take her by the neck and toss her out of the room again, but only just.  The rest of her isn’t capable of formulating any such plans, or even a single thought, right now.  “Um--I hate to disturb you, but we’re closing up for the night.  The archive will still be here tomorrow, though?”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, reaching for her coat and pulling it on with stilted, absent-minded movements.  “You’re right, of course.  It’ll all still be here tomorrow.”  
  
“Get some rest,” Belle says, mustering up the audacity to put a hand on her arm.  “You look like you need it.”  
  
She doesn’t even manage a smile, but lets Belle usher her to the front, where she just keeps moving until she’s back in the jeep, next to fish in a bowl that are glowing in the darkening sky, just a little, but enough for her to think of magic and all the ways in which she has none of it, here.  
  
All she has is glowing fish and a Maeve Binchy novel.  What a showing, for  _two whole lives_.  
  
...  
  
Then, for an hour, she gets to pretend that this is another iteration of the original curse.  
  
Henry is having dinner with her, talking to her about soccer practice and his best friend Miles and how he’d like to go camping again this summer, if Emma can find a way to take the time off; and so it is confirmed that Emma  _is_  the mayor of this new Storybrooke, a year into her first term after years of working her way up the council responsibility chain until she was basically  _asked_  to run, opposing an unnamed party that Regina suspects is buried somewhere in the fiches at the library.  
  
Broccoli is eaten without complaint, as are the carrots, and he takes his own plate to the kitchen and then heads upstairs to get his homework, which he completes in the kitchen as she tidies up, asking her the occasional question about the ancient Egyptians and why nobody in the United States ever built a pyramid because they’re really cool.  
  
She laughs, a little, before explaining economies of scale in building to him the best she can, and then glances at the calendar on the fridge, color-coded with a large, red  _Town Meeting City Hall 8pm_ circled on a Monday right in the middle.  
  
At 7.45, the doorbell rings and Alice, wearing a long t-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on it and a pair of dark red leggings and these ridiculously oversized glasses, says, “Hey, Regina--I’m  _so_ sorry I’m running late but Wendy had this thing with her boyfriend and--ugh, it’s whatever.”  
  
“That’s quite all right,” Regina says, tentatively opening the door as the girl strides in, messenger bag immediately being deposited next to her raggedy Converse.  Then, Alice just tucks unruly blond hair behind her ears and says, “Anything I need to do with him tonight?”  
  
“No, he’s finished his homework,” Regina says.  “Just--”  
  
“I know, no violent games, no violent movies,” Alice says, grinning at her.  “He mostly just wants me to talk to him about the band anyway--and, hey, we’re doing this all-ages thing at The Rabbit Hole so maybe he can come and watch?  Killian, y’know, Mr. Jones--he’s drumming for us--”  
  
Regina bites on her lip before she can blurt out  _with one hand?_ because it’s entirely possible he has  _two,_ now, and so she just lets the girl warble on about her “girl-punk pop crossover project”, named the Darling Wonders, nodding from time to time.  
  
“Shoot, you have to go,” Alice finally says, pointing at a gaudy Swatch wrist watch and shoving Regina’s coat into her hands.  “Here you go; see you and the missus later tonight.”  
  
“The mis...” Regina starts to say, and then just slips into her coat, directing one last look at Alice.  “He’s in bed by nine.”  
  
“ _Duh,_ ” Alice says, before closing the door behind her and then hollering out an ear-splitting  _Henry!_  that’s met with an equally enthused  _HI ALICE!_ as she’s out on the front steps.  
  
She’d never considered Alice as a potential babysitter, but apparently Emma  _has_ ; all she can do, for her part, is accept that there are now people weaved into their existence that she has no power to object to at all anymore.  
  
…  
  
David sticks up a hand in in greeting to her, on the second to last row in the council meeting room, and she gingerly sits down next to him, unbuttoning her coat slowly as he feels around his pocket for a moment and then produces a magnetic game of Tic-Tac-Toe.  
  
It’s so ridiculous that she laughs, draping her coat over the chair next to her, and then says, “Well, why not.”  
  
“I’m sure you know the plans as well as I do and they’re probably going to get approved; everyone thinks the gym is in dire need of an upgrade but, well, if Emma’s going to open up the floor to questions we’ll be here forever.  Circles or crosses?”  
  
“Crosses,” she says, and glances around the room.  
  
A few people offer her smiles and waving hands in welcome, and she stiffly returns the motion, feeling more like a queen than she has in decades now.  The awkward hand gestures, the ritual of the entire process of acknowledgement--it’s another familiarity for her to hide behind, as David lines up their magnets and then holds the board up in his palm.  
  
She’s contemplating if he’s planning to cheat her as the chair next to her gets jostled and an arm gets slung around her shoulder, abruptly enough for her to stiffen and drop her magnetic cross somewhere.  David, ever the gentleman in all lifetimes, bends down to get it, and a stubbly kiss is pressed to her cheek.  
  
“Missed you today,” Killian Jones tells her, before letting go of a loud  _oomph_  as Ruby Lucas sits on his lap and starts running her hand through his hair, bringing it back to a semblance of order.  
  
He’s wearing a leather jacket and a pair of well-worn jeans and cowboy boots, and his ever-present earrings have been replaced by a few simpler, more activity-safe studs.  Ruby looks the way she had in the old Storybrooke, an odd mixture of innocence and gothic Lolita trash.  Altogether they are a disgustingly attractive couple, to the point where it takes Regina a moment to stop staring at them.  
  
“Any problems?” she then asks Killian, after a nod to Ruby.  
  
He shakes his head.  “None, so perhaps when you take a holiday this summer, you’ll trust me to run the center in your absence?”  
  
“We’ll see,” Regina says, before feeling a genuine plummeting of her stomach as Kathryn and her--well,  _happily ever after_ , so she’s going to presume--husband Frederick walk in, hand in hand and talking softly about something.  They head to the front, with Kathryn smiling at her in a way she hasn’t been smiled at in months now, and her skin creaks with the effort it takes to overcome the guilt that washes over her and smile back.  
  
Her new best friends; a pirate turned jockey, and the woman who had offered her friendship at a time when she could not, under any circumstances, have genuinely returned it.  
  
David pops back up with a red face, giving her back her cross.  
  
“You’ve cornered me,” she tells him, a few seconds later, before placing an aimless last cross in a location where he’s guaranteed to beat her.  
  
“Rematch?” he asks, before smiling at Ruby and then pausing as the city’s officials start their walk down towards the lined chairs at the front of the room, Emma leading the pack with Snow-- _Mary Margaret_ \--immediately behind her.  
  
Oh, if only he knew, Regina thinks, and gets a first good look of the former sheriff as the current mayor, striding down the aisle in a fashion that Regina recognizes all too well.  
  
…  
  
“Poker on Friday?” Ruby asks, when they’re finally shuffling out after a painstaking two hours of hearing near-identical opinions on a project  _everyone_  wants to approve.  The most genuine touches had come from Frederick, who had pled for a safer gym, given the accident that had happened--  
  
And everyone had fallen silent, and Regina had thought back to a wolf and a boy and an afternoon that is now hers alone to remember.  
  
“Of course,” Regina says, when it’s clear that Ruby is issuing a reminder more than an invitation; and there are worse ways to spend an evening than gambling with these two.  They’d been appropriately sacrilegious throughout the meeting, with David occasionally offering a somewhat hopeless  _shhhh_  as the town’s simpler denizens had offered their opinions about why school buildings matter; she cannot imagine their company would be any less acceptable if alcohol and cards were introduced.  
  
It is just  _one_  more fact, in a day full of facts, that suggests that whatever Emma had been thinking in those last moments, it had been disgustingly selfless and full of consideration of what Regina would actually  _want_  in a life that held no escape clauses.  
  
Desirable friends, a desirable job, and a relationship with Henry that is incomparable to the tense hostility and fear that had marked it by the end of their days in the original Storybrooke; and all that for the price of …  
  
Well.  
  
One heart magically destroyed, and one heart magically gained.  
  
She waits, as everyone files out of the room and Killian finger-guns at her and says, “Tomorrow--we race”, and as David packs up his magnets and then says, “That went really well, right?”  
  
It had gone well, Regina agrees with a silent nod; after sitting through two council meetings mostly characterized by rushed, utopian proposals from people who wanted it  _all_ , the compromise of a smaller wing for languages and social science subjects in exchange for a larger cafeteria seems so utterly  _capable_  that she’d almost applauded the whole room.  
  
Still--the real work starts now, and that’s what’s on her mind as she follows David to the front of the room, where Mary Margaret looks relieved and Emma just looks  _tired_.  The girl has never had any patience for politics, regardless of her station in life, so the fact that she’s volunteered herself for this position says that some things will never change; they are  _always_  happy to fall on the tips of swords, those Charmings.  
  
“Hey,” Emma says, as Regina stops in front of the lectern and examines her new wife--someone she’s  _brought to orgasm_ , more than once--as innocuously as she can; but, no.  There is nothing there. Whatever life Emma created for them, her  _feelings_  at least remain her own.  “Sorry you had to sit through all of that--it was just in case there was a vote--”  
  
“I understand,” Regina says, stepping up on the podium and glancing over at the paperwork Emma has in front of her.  “Did you already commission designs?  That’s optimistic.”  
  
“It’s just the internal work-up; I thought I might have to demonstrate that we didn’t allocate too much or too little money, but--”  
  
“Well, yes, you’ll want to set up a design contest with closer parameters now that you know your target budget will be approved; I would guess that the planning and engineering costings aren’t far off, however.”  
  
She looks up from the paperwork a few moments later only to be greeted by an absolutely baffled look on Emma’s face, and frowns unwillingly.  
  
“The planning department  _has_  done a write-up of the costings, hasn’t it?”  
  
“Uh, yeah, but--” Emma tilts her head after a few seconds and then shakes her head, coy in a way that actually makes her look like the little princess she was always meant to be.  “God, I had no idea you actually absorbed all my blabbering about the town; I thought you just tuned me out, the way I kind of zone out every time you start talking about um, horse births.”  
  
“Oh,” Regina says, and prods at the inside of her cheek with her tongue, because what is there to say?   _Apologies, dear, but in a different life I did your job--and very well, at that._  
  
“No, it’s--that’s,” Emma says, before running a tired hand through her hair and just sighing, before favoring her with the smallest of private smiles.  “You’re the best.  And since you’re listening anyway, I’m going to put you on the budgetary committee that’ll award the contract--”  
  
Regina laughs, softly, and ignores the fact that David and Mary Margaret are now engaged in some unnecessary  _cuddling_  somewhere behind Emma.  “I see; pay attention and pay the price.”  
  
“Yeah, I picked up that tactic from  _someone’s_  horse riding lessons,” Emma says, also gently amused.  
  
Half of Regina wants to start clawing at the girl’s face, but the other half remembers a Christmas dinner that never actually took place, and how this Emma--a version Emma herself has wished she could be--is truly nothing like the girl that set out to ruin her last year.  
  
Whatever resentment she has, it will simply have to be swallowed down, as so much of her hurt was pushed back, and back, and further back still, shortly following her first arranged marriage.  
  
This is no different.  The perks are better, in fact, because they are  _Henry_.  
  
“Alice is waiting to be relieved; shall we?” she says, after a few moments.  
  
The way Emma’s hand slots into hers, as if they’ve done this a thousand and one times before--and  _they have,_ Regina’s mind treacherously whispers at her,  _they have_ \--is enough for her to just stop thinking altogether.  
  
She’s survived this day.  She’ll survive another, and then another still.


	3. Chapter 3

_Two_  
  
…  
  
The life of a wife has never come naturally to her.  
  
As Leopold’s consort, she’d been relegated to a throne situated slightly behind his, cast forever in the shadows of the tapestries that painted the White family legacies and glorified the  _queen_ ; as long as either Snow or her father lived, that would not be a mantle that Regina herself could wear.  Instead, she wore beautiful dresses, rich velvets and soft silks, and applied all of the lessons on being a lady that her mother had ever imparted, and felt herself slowly start to shrivel up, like a rose bush that was getting neither water nor sunlight.  
  
Her role was cast in stone; she was there for Snow and Snow alone, and her days were spent swallowing her tongue.  Her nights, both happily and achingly alone--eventually--were lined with books of magic that she devoured, jars full of potions and spells that she kept hidden in a chest at the foot of her bed.  Snow would clamber over it from time to time, and it would tinkle with all the little glass bottles knocking together, but Snow never questioned that sound.  Never questioned  _anything_.  
  
If her life was perfect, after all, everyone else’s had to be as well.  
  
…  
  
Her sleep is restless, those first few nights after the spell.  
  
At least some of her blind tossing is rooted in wary anticipation; she keeps expecting Emma to make demands on her that she’s not sure she knows  _how_  to meet.  Fiches await her in the library still, and they’ll provide the instruction that she’s lacking, but for now she refuses to be confronted with more artificial happiness.  
  
The  _real_  thing is trying enough, and her only escape from it is her job, which has been an unexpected blessing.  The stables are in the finest form they have ever been; even Daniel hadn’t managed to make them shimmer with promise the way Emma’s lacquered white and blue paints have done.  Where she got the color scheme ideas from is at best a guess, but Regina is reminded of her family’s crest in history; all that’s missing is the golden thread weaved through, but if she never sees golden thread again in her life...  
  
Fresh air helps her not  _think._ Riding is an excuse to just feel, liberated even with the strings that keep tugging her back to her new home, her new family.  Trotting into the woods, past the troll bridge and towards the lake, or gently lashing her crop backwards as she and Killian streak through the sand by the coastline, horse-hair whipping in her face as she lowers her chest to Rocinante’s graceful, slender neck, she feels like an entirely different person.  Someone who has  _escaped_ ; someone who cannot be yanked back by any vines or any curses.  
  
The horses don’t ask questions, and Killian seems content to talk to  _himself_  for the most part.  His company is unobtrusive, and the hours she spends brushing down her stallion in an enclosure right next to his start feeling _comfortable_  in a way that she does not know how to handle.  Even the equestrian center’s real lifeblood--the lessons she gives to the town’s children--are an unexpected form of forgiveness, in that none fear her, and she finds herself wanting to laugh at their slipping and sliding in the pen more and more.  
  
Laughter sticks in her throat, however, because eventually, the job ends.  The clock tower chimes  _five_ \--sometimes  _eight_ \--and her horse transforms into a mouse, or perhaps a pumpkin; the fairy tale where she is free to be herself ends, either way.    
  
And so she goes  _home_.  To her wife.   _As_ a wife.  
  
The time she and Emma have to spend together is thankfully limited, for now.  They’ve switched realities in the middle of audit season, and so on weekdays, Emma is out of bed by six and not back until one, merely pressing a chilly cheek to hers and bussing her forehead while she lies there, stiff with a brand of anxiety she hasn’t felt in decades now.  
  
On Wednesday, after a late lesson, she herself isn’t back until midnight and is still awake when the bed dips next to her.  Emma smells of honeysuckle and something fresh and clean that she can’t quite place; it’s very feminine, whatever it is.  It’s feminine in a way that Regina can easily associate with the sheriff’s mother, but not the gun-toting foolhardy boot-stomping girl that now invades every fragment of her personal space.    
  
Feminine or otherwise, by the time the moon lifts to its peak, Emma is  _there_.  The princess snores in all worlds, and while it keeps Regina up, it’s a predictable constant that, come weekend, she accepts as part of her new existence.  Emma snores and sleeps with her arm awkwardly draped over her head: a fact of life.  
  
Within days other little observations join that first.    
  
Emma sometimes forgets to cap the toothpaste, but Emma never forgets to toss her clothes into the hamper before she rushes down the stairs, two at a time, like a galloping foal.  Emma texts her with innocuous status updates at least twice a day, and fits grocery shopping into an incredibly punishing schedule, somehow.  It’s something she  _herself_  had never quite managed during the worst months of the year, but Emma doesn’t believe in hiring a service, and an ad hoc chores schedule on the fridge is another thing that makes up the day to day in her new existence.  
  
How the chores are divided up seems very equal, and even caters to her preferences to a large degree; and as she ticks off  _take out the garbage_  on Thursday morning, she considers that it may very well be  _because_ they’re both women.  
  
The fact that she’s in a  _gay_  relationship doesn’t even occur to her until Henry brings up the election as she’s preparing for dinner.  He talks of how gay marriage is going to be legalized in Maine soon, browsing through the morning paper absently while looking at her with hawkish curiosity.  She contemplates the  _gay_ in her marriage for the first time, and then offers him the slightest of smiles and says, “Well, we’ll have to see, how this vote goes.”  
  
This isn’t the Enchanted Forest, and so  _gay_ is neither scandalous nor uncommon.  It seems to just  _be_ , much like Emma’s snoring and her own restless slumber--yes, Emma is female, in both expected and unexpected ways, but Emma is also  _Emma_ , and truthfully, that is the far more suffocating aspect of her new life.  
  
…  
  
On Thursday night--the fourth  that she spends in Emma’s version of her house--rustling noises downstairs wake her up fully.  It’s one in the morning, and so she tentatively crosses the landing and winds down the stairs, only to find Emma eating leftover pasta salad right out of the Tupperware, illuminated only by the light of the fridge.  
  
Shadows under the sheriff’s eyes make her look her actual age, and Regina tightens the sash on her robe and stiltedly admits, “I thought you might be a burglar.”  
  
“A burglar having a snack, mid-robbery,” Emma says, swallowing quickly and then sheepishly turning towards the cabinets behind her for a plate.  “I don’t think that’s how burglars work, babe.”  
  
“ _Babe,_ ” Regina repeats, and Emma looks over her shoulder and gives her a sleepy wink.  
  
“Sorry.  Getting my kicks where I can.  This audit is  _from hell_.”  
  
They end up sitting at the kitchen table together for half an hour, while Emma quietly complains about how paperwork seems to just lose itself and how accountancy isn’t her strong suit--“but you know that, you dragged me through that elective”--and eats an inordinate number of carbohydrates that she just washes down with some cranberry juice and then a glass of milk.  
  
“Why are you up, anyway?” Emma finally asks, peering up at her from behind hair that’s losing some of its shine; as if it’s not powered by  _true love_  after all.    
  
Time gets them all in the end, and Regina shrugs.  “Not sure.”  
  
“Empty bed syndrome,” Emma declares, leaning back in her chair now that the Tupperware is nearly empty and she’s finished her disgusting combination of drinks.  “You can’t sleep because I’m not there, probably.”  
  
The days of riding have relaxed Regina to the point where she just sort of half-smiles and says, “I’m not sure that  _science_  supports that hypothesis, but why not?”  
  
“Well, if you like--” Emma starts to say, before yawning so wide that her jaw actually cracks, and then she just softly laughs at herself and shakes her head.  “Never mind.  I was going to offer to knock you out the fun way, but I honestly don’t think I have the energy.”  
  
“I’ll live, dear,” Regina says, taking the empty container and the two empty glasses and carrying them over to the sink, where they’ll sit until Emma deals with them in the morning.  She rinses her hands, and then jolts when a palm settles low on her hip, just  _touching_  her there, as if there isn’t anything that such a gesture should imply.  
  
It’s difficult to blame Emma for the thoughts that accost her immediately.  There is no way for her to know that that kind of possession in a gesture makes her feel like a promising broodmare, and so she stills and lets the hand be there, warm and (at least in her  _newer_  memories) a source of comfort and support.  
  
“You’ve seemed a little down, lately,” Emma then says, before letting her hand fall away again and moving in closer, face highlighted by dusky moonlight filtering in through the horizontal blinds.  “Is it just the seasons, or--”  
  
The role of  _wife_  means talking of these things at one thirty in the morning with a disheveled Emma Swan, who starts taking out her earrings and then uncuffs the sleeves on her blouse and finally just looks at her in a way that seems unbearably patient.  
  
“It’s been ten years,” Regina says, when it’s clear she has to say  _something_.    
  
In reality, it’s been many more than that, but the grief has been refreshed by that day in the library, and it stings her all the more these days.  Her losses are a wave; the most she can try to do is trot away from them, but they will eventually wash her under.  
  
“Yeah, it has,” Emma says, cupping her earrings in a fist and then using that fist to gently rub at Regina’s upper arm.  “For both of us.”  
  
“It doesn’t  _feel_  like it’s been ten years.”  
  
“I think the point at which it does, that’s probably a sign that you’re sick of me.”  
  
Regina tries not to roll her eyes, and then just towels her hands dry until they’re arrested by Emma, who looks at them closely for a few seconds.  Then, she stiltedly--and more like herself than she has been, this past week--says, “There are things in life that we would both undo and  _never_  change.  Daniel and Henry are that, for me.  So I’m sorry that it’ll always hurt, but I’m not sorry that it happened, because I would’ve never--”  
  
The irony is something else.  After a second Regina just lets go of the towel and says, “I know.”  
  
“Poker night won’t even cheer you up?” Emma asks, almost nervously now, and Regina sighs, rooting through her acquired knowledge for any indication of what  _poker night_  is like.  
  
“It will.  I'll win, obviously.  Killian should know better than to gamble while drinking by now.”  
  
Emma crooks a small smile at her.  “Has it ever occurred to you that they let you win?”  
  
It’s an impossible question to respond to, and in the end, she doesn’t have to; Emma just brushes a thumb past her cheek and kisses her in a way that implies lasting commitment.  Or so she assumes, anyway.  It’s not a feeling she’s ever had to bear before, because there hadn’t been  _time_  for it with Daniel, and her relationship with Leopold--well, one doesn’t tenderly  _kiss_  the cow after it’s been paid for.    
  
Especially not if it never  _does_  produce the milk.  
  
After pulling back, Emma reaches for her hand and says, “I’m going to clock out early tomorrow.  I need a break, and you look like you need to get laid.  Maybe you'll go easy on Killian if I just, y'know."  
  
“That’s--” Regina starts to say, but the statement surprises her into laughter, and the best she can do is cover her own mouth and hope Emma hasn’t imagined a version of her that is generally   _forthcoming_  about these things.  
  
Doing them is one thing--and she will adjust, she always has--but talking about them?  
  
Their knuckles lock together a second later and she hears Emma chuckle softly as well.   When they reach the bedroom again, Emma gently nudges her towards the bed and says, “I’ll be there in a second.”  
  
That second never really registers, and she sleeps through the rest of the night without problems, dreaming of sunrises in shaded forest clearings and the way water just seems to flow endlessly.  
  
…  
  
Before heading to the stables, she returns to the library.  Princess Aurora is there, reading the latest  _Us Weekly_  behind the desk; the girl straightens in a manner that seems almost frightful as Regina walks in.  Even in supple riding boots and a soft suede jacket, it’s not a struggle for her to intimidate  _some_ , and she has to hide a smile as she approaches the desk.  
  
“Mrs. Swan,” the girl breathes at her.  It’s an automatic invitation to her  _bad side_ , because no matter what world they are in, she would  _never_  have taken Emma’s name and, honestly, the sheriff damn well  _knows_  that.  
  
Regina lets her teeth grind together for just a moment and then says, “The archives, dear.  Are they locked?”  
  
“Um, yes,” Aurora says, before reaching for a key ring right next to the barcode scanner and handing it to her.  “I think it’s the big one.  Belle said, but--”  
  
“I’ll manage,” Regina says, letting her lips curve around her teeth as she adds, “ _Thank you_ , Aurora.”  
  
Wide green eyes goggle at her, briefly.  “You’re … you’re welcome?”  
  
It’s a small, trifling pleasure; the kind she used to get out of lighting a fire with a spark from her  _mind_.  She keeps it close to her as she strides to the back of the library again and locks herself in with the document reader.  It’s tempting to blush, but she’s no  _virgin_ , and so she shuts the door behind her and turns the key again in a manner that is purely professional.  
  
Then, she sits down, and looks at the fiches and thinks for a few moments.  They were married in 2010, and they became intimate--awkwardly and suddenly--in late 2007.  
  
If she had to take a guess as to when their sex life became  _actually_  good, it’s the latter half of 2008, at which point any pre-existing hang-ups or neuroses between two emotionally healthy adults--and she laughs, quietly, at the idea that she’s meant to  _be_  one--would have been smoothed over by practice.  
  
She pinches the bridge of her nose for a few seconds, and then takes a deep breath, as if she’s about to be submerged; and then turns the power on, gripping the edge of her seat with one hand as--  
  
…  
  
It’s difficult not to compare what she  _suspects_  and what she’s  _told_.  
  
Emma, in the real world, is reticent and flighty; phobic of lasting affection, and incapable of returning it to anyone but Henry.  Even without  _knowing_ the girl, her track record speaks for itself.  Whatever relationship she may have had with Henry’s father, it had shattered by the time she came of age--and since then, what Sidney dug up on her suggests that any release she’s found has been fleeting and one-off.  
  
Pleasure, but nothing that would last more than a moment, nothing that might  _mean_ something.  
  
None of this is alien to Regina--quite the opposite, really--but it seems that in Emma, any buried hopes she might’ve  _had_  for intercourse have all come forth in this reality.  The  _happy endings_  in her happy ending are omnipresent; seeing it printed onto these fiches is staggering, even to a queen who willed her subjects into her bedchamber because there was nothing to stop her doing it.  
  
Sometimes, she and Emma come together in a way that is gentle and intimate and close, foreheads pressed together with fingers blindly feeling until they chance on a seemingly gentle, undulating kind of peak.   In these moments, they are barely even  _trying_  for pinnacles because pinnacles aren’t the point; Regina feels herself frown when the words  _making love_  come to mind, and scans along a little bit faster to whatever next recollection Emma throws her way, before biting her lip softly at the slew of images that assaults her in no particular order at all.    
  
She sees arms straining up against a headboard, then Emma’s head thrown back in pleasure--hair in waves down her shoulders, muscles straining and rippling along her arched back--as she’s bent over some invisible item of furniture; she sees Emma’s mouth up against her ear, whispering things that actually make her lean back until she can get them  _out_  of her head again.  Next, there’s Emma leaning over her with a black silk scarf and promising her that this’ll make everything seem like  _more_ somehow, and a very innocent and young Emma tugging on a strap on her own hips and warning Regina that if she laughs, even once, this is  _definitely_ not happening--before then helplessly laughing herself.  
  
She sees herself climax, the way Emma imagines it, and wonders if she’s ever  _really_  looked like that at all--and then listens to Emma guide her, one hand knotted into her hair and the other forceful on her shoulder, two blunt heels digging into the small of her back, soft entreaties for  _more_  and  _faster_  and  _there, don’t stop_  filtering down from higher up above the bed.    
  
She sees  _Emma_ climax, and tastes the girl on her lips, feels Emma’s legs scissor shut around her face and somewhere, dimly,  hears Emma’s heart beat, thick and fast and overwhelmingly linked to her own.  
  
The most terrible part is this, however:  
  
Regardless if Emma’s legs splay apart, knee crashing onto the sheets at an awkward angle, or Emma’s body slumps forward, sweaty and trembling on the furniture, or Emma sinks down the wall, back streaking down the wallpaper with a dulled squeak--no matter how explicit, how  _impure_ the things they do together, as soon as Emma’s eyes flutter open again, she reaches down with a mumbled, “Come here”, and then they  _kiss_ and  _cuddle_.  
  
Every single time.  
  
She shuts the document reader off and files the fiches away, thinking of the other events that flashed by--birthday parties for Henry, Emma packing a suitcase and moving in for the weekends, first, and then just never leaving again, Kathryn’s pregnancy and miscarriage, Mary Margaret’s questions about how to make a relationship  _work_  because she loves David so and is so worried that she’ll mess everything up if she pushes too hard--and working her fingers loose from their bruising grip around the chair’s seat.  
  
When she closes the box full of fiches, the lid shuts with the kind of force that lets Regina know that her work is  _done_ here.  She’s witnessed the love she doesn’t feel for Emma be expressed in every way imaginable, now, and the fiches will simply be fiches from now, documenting births and relationships and scabbed-over knees and lost teeth and first dances and deaths,  _too_ many deaths, for anyone in the town at all.  
  
Her legs are shaking when she gets to her feet, and as she heads back to her car, barely even glancing at Aurora, she wonders if Emma will notice if she shuts her mind off from what is about to pass; wonders if Emma will notice her freezing at statements like  _open yourself up for me, let me see you--Jesus, look at how fucking wet you are_.    
  
Hell, simply  _freezing_ is the best goddamned scenario in the face of that level of impudence; Emma will be lucky to leave the bed with all of her teeth intact if she  _tries_.  
  
Except that’s not how this will go.  
  
The fact that she is meant to  _want_  these things with Emma makes her nearly hyperventilate, right there and out in the open, on a street that she designed herself in a painstaking and considered fashion, and that just won’t  _do_.  It won’t do at all.  There is but one way forward; if Miss Swan wants to talk about how  _wet_  her wife is--though the wife in question doubts she  _will_  be--then she’ll just have to tolerate it because that is what they’ve done to each other.  
  
That’s what her life now  _is_.    
  
She punches a few more coins into the parking meter to make sure she doesn’t have to be dragged into the Sheriff’s Department for Mulan to write her a ticket, because going  _there_  right now is not going to help her regain her calm.  
  
Once back in her car, she takes a few deep, even breaths, and then drives over to Kathryn’s office, for a lunch that will make her teem with unease in an entirely different way.  Perhaps Kathryn has some advice for her on how to make marriage  _work_ ; the simple truths she herself told Mary Margaret, according to the fiches, sound like a load of fantastical nonsense that she can’t imagine ever coming out of her mouth.    
  
Trust, love, compromise-- _God_.    
  
The only trick to marriage that  _she_  knows isn’t one that she’s likely to repeat in this world, unfortunately.  
  
…  
  
Her hair is windblown, thoughts scattered on the trail behind her, by the time she dismounts and hands the reins of her horse--already the closest she’s had to a companion in years, now--to Killian, who gives her a slightly knowing look that she stops short with a pointed stare of her own.  
  
He sobers, and then starts guiding the horses back into the stable, merely saying, “I shall see you tonight, then.”  
  
When she heads back into the main building, she catches sight of herself in the mirror and unwillingly feels her forehead crinkle.  She’s in no state to be whisked off to her marital bed; she smells of woodlands and hay and thinly dried sweat, and her makeup is fading and her eyes...  
  
She sighs, and finds her phone in her desk drawer, hitting the first speed dial instinctively and ending up on hold with Wendy Darling, who is interning at the city hall for her senior year of high school; another Aurora, Regina scathingly concludes, and then taps her short nails against the plastic case around the phone.  
  
It takes Emma half a minute to appear, and when she does it’s with a rushed, “I’m leaving, pretty much now--are you done for the day?”  
  
“I thought I’d … bathe, first,” Regina says, certain that the distaste present in her voice will be associated with the  _horses_  Emma seems to care for not at all, and not with what’s actually causing it.  “I just called to let you know.”  
  
“Ah, shit, I was going to surprise you with--well, you know.  A bath and some wine and--that kind of thing,” Emma says, exhaling forcibly enough for the connection to crackle.  “Raincheck?”  
  
“Bring the wine regardless.”  
  
“All right.  Henry’s going over to Nicky and Ava’s, so we have until about seven.  Take your time.”  
  
“I will,” Regina murmurs, hanging up again and staring at the small pile of paperwork--invoicing, food and supply orders, and insurance renewals--that waits her on her desk.  Ridiculous as it sounds, she’s been saving it for a day on which she desperately  _needs_  to feel like her old self.  
  
She sighs and gathers her purse, and if it comes off as if she’s walking the plank as she heads back to that hideous jeep that she now drives, the horses will be alone in witnessing it.  
  
…  
  
She perches on the edge of the bed like a virgin on her wedding night, when she’s done.  
  
On her  _first_ wedding night, a dress--and matching undergarments--had been laid out for her.  Regardless of how untraditional her new marriage is, she cannot help but cling to some of the formality--a manner in which to make it  _equally_  meaningless, at least.  
  
The simple gray dress she’s wearing is one she’s worn around Emma before, and that Emma must have favored on some level; the idea slithers in her stomach like a snake, but she dons the dress and applies a slash of red lipstick and dots perfume behind her ears and onto her wrists, and sits and waits.  
  
The front door slams shut after an indeterminate number of minutes, and heels punch down on the marble tiles, before a crash sounds and she gets to her feet on instinct; all it is, however, is Emma kicking off her footwear before bounding up the stairs, briefcase dropped on the landing, before bursting into the room with a rushed, “I’m  _so sorry_ , the guys from the hardware store accosted me outside of my office--”  
  
Regina smirks, because she knows exactly what’s happened; one dwarf or another had a complaint about something and dragged a troll and a farmer along, and so minutes disappear.  “I hope you didn’t sign whatever it was they were threatening you with  _just_  to get home, dear.”  
  
The sheepish look on Emma’s face, as she stops in her tracks, is enough to make her smirk wider.  
  
“... maybe I did, but I won’t file it until I’ve had another look at it,” she then says, reaching for her hair and pulling it back into a sloppy ponytail.  “Anyway, don't tell the voters, but I don’t really care.  I’ve been thinking about you all day and, uh--”  
  
She trots back into the hallway and then returns, brandishing a bottle of Merlot like it’s a sword and looking so desperately expectant that Regina struggles to not caustically tell the princess that dumbstruck hopefulness is perhaps something she  _gets_  from her father, but not something that  _favors_  her.  
  
“Are you expecting me to just neck the bottle like I’m a seventeen year old with a paper bag behind the liquor store?” she asks instead, raising an eyebrow.  
  
Emma blushes, which is absurd, and then laughs a little and puts the bottle down on the dresser before staring at her own bare feet.  “I’m sorry, I’m just a little--”  
  
“ _Excited_?” Regina asks.  The chill in her tone is apparent to her, but it might sound like she’s shaking with something closer to  _want_  to Emma, who peers up at her through long, curled eyelashes and then sighs softly.  
  
“We’ve both been busy.  I promised myself that we wouldn’t turn into one of  _those_ couples once I took up office, but I’ve been letting things slide and--yeah, I hate it.  So we have about two hours, and I plan on making them count, the way we did when we first started--you know.”  
  
Of all the things she’s ever been threatened with, this is akin to losing Henry in how it seems to coagulate her blood instantaneously.  “Big words, Madam Mayor,” she says, biting out the title in a way that should be a familiar rebuke and mockery to Emma; the  _old_ Emma, anyway.  
  
It doesn’t work like that, now, and she silently curses herself when she realizes  _why_.  The memory’s from the summer of 2008, when--after some encouragement--Emma had admitted that as much as she still hated riding, Regina’s  _lessons_  on the subject had played a minor part in her teenaged fantasies for years on end.   _You were this really hot older chick, okay, and I know you had Daniel and you seriously didn’t mean anything by it, but the whole, “Miss Swan--pay attention!” thing.... yeah._  
  
She holds her breath as Emma’s eyes darken, but after Emma slowly takes in her attire--and it’s astonishing, the way that a woman who used to look at her with nothing but loathing and then  _pity_  now seemingly finds everything about her attractive--she looks back up in a way that’s almost simpering.  
  
“I just want to  _be_  with you,” she then says, like an awkward teenager trying to explain the difference between  _liking_  someone and  _like-liking_  someone.  
  
It’s so horrifically genuine that Regina wonders if her skin might just melt altogether before the afternoon’s proceedings can really even  _begin_ , but alas.  After a few more steadying breaths, she gets off the bed and wanders over to the bottle of wine, picking it up slowly--and, despite herself, appreciating the vintage--and then looking back at Emma.  
  
“Then let’s  _first_  have a drink.  We have time.”  
  
…  
  
In her other lives, the first ones to touch her intimately had not loved her.  
  
Oh, how she had squeezed her eyes shut and pictured her stable boy--the tightness of his embrace, the way he’d always smelled faintly of grass and wood and hay, these  _earthy_  scents that her mother scoffed at and insisted she’d wash off her.  
  
There had been so little at the palace to remind her of him; one tree, at best, and her step-daughter’s eyes.  
  
Mind, Leopold had not been a terrible man.  If he had, she wouldn’t have ensured a swift, subtle ending for him; one so quick that he would scarcely have to know what had happened.  She had spared him the sight of her betrayal; spared him the knowledge that the wife he’d married to please his daughter had  _loathed_  him, for everything he stood for and everything she’d lost in arriving at his palace.  No--he hadn’t been a terrible man, and though his manners in bed suggested that he’d been trying to please someone not  _quite_  like her, he’d attempted attentiveness.  
  
With time came the realization that he could not be blamed for how much his efforts suffocated her.  He had no way of knowing.  
  
They did not conceive together in the first half year, and after that, his visits dwindled down; he aged quickly, noting that his nearly-adult daughter was almost ready to find her own true love somewhere in the realm.  His almost baleful disinterest in bedding her for the sake of it was a comfort--her skin stopped feeling like it was only holding together a tangle of bones, like the rest of her had ceased existing--and an insult all at once, but without obligation she discovered she had no interest in intercourse at all, really.  
  
She went without for a very long time, before making a discovery that would have made her mother proud of her at last: sex was  _power_.  
  
The men who had followed Leopold had not so much been invited into her bedchambers as summoned in.  Royal prerogative, of course; nobody said no to a queen, but they had also not really ever said  _yes_.  Living in Storybrooke had made the difference starkly clear in a way that nothing in the Enchanted Forest ever could have done.  Here, as Mayor, she had been  _chosen_  to rule, at least in theory; and so with her role came an implied consent, a whole chorus of voices silently saying  _yes_.  
  
Knowledge of the difference had made her time spent with the Huntsman hollow and empty, the blacks of his eyes nothing but a window that she could see straight through.  Neither of them had felt anything, even if they also hadn’t, exactly, said  _no_.  
  
All of this rushes through her mind in a manner of instants as Emma reaches for the zipper on the side of her dress, and with a single, measured movement, slides it down.  It’s the most silent the sheriff--no, the  _mayor_ , she reminds herself--has ever been; even in this world, where she has little reason to be harried and on edge, she bangs and clangs through the entire house, like all that happiness inside of her can only come out in bursts of sound.  
  
Not now, however--and Regina wonders if this intimate quiet will make her panic, if prolonged.  She loosens the belt on the dress, for something to do, and knows that shifting even a little will start the fabric’s swift slide down her torso, until it puddles on the floor.   _That_ is something she’ll berate herself for, later--clothes go in hampers or on hangers, and it’s hard enough to keep Emma conscious of the rule  _without_ her breaking it herself--but clothing,  _clothing_  is something she can let herself think about now, unlike...  
  
“Relax,” Emma says, so softly it’s barely audible.  “You’re super tense; did you not get a chance to ride today or what?”  
  
Regina forces herself to unwind, before realizing that unwinding isn’t something that can be forced, and then admits, “Just thinking.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“First times,” she says.  
  
Emma’s eyes soften slightly, and then her thumb brushes by the corner of Regina’s mouth.  “I’m glad I’ve always had a lot to live up to.  Honest.”  
  
Regina can’t quite smile in response, but also can’t look away from the woman whose vision for their new lives was so  _unbearably_  kind.    
  
Death cannot be undone, of course, but she has gained memories now, vivid and potent, of being seventeen and sneaking out behind the stables with Daniel, pressing him up against the cold bricks and kissing him, tugging at his belt, loosening it, and finding out what it was that occasionally pressed against her when they rode together.    
  
It takes a lot of her energy to keep reminding herself that none of that ever happened; it feels like a gift, precious like his ring had once been to her, and so she closes her eyes briefly and remembers that first time--when he’d whispered  _I love you_ as he’d stilled inside of her, and she’d grasped for his back and the words to express how  _small_ they were, how utterly at one with the mossy ground they were on she felt, and how the entire universe had somehow distilled down to the point where they’d connected.  
  
It is a beautiful enough memory to make her eyes burn.  It’s beautiful and more than she deserves, yet ultimately so very false that it feels like her mother’s final send-off as well as a gift--as if it came from  _both_ of their hearts, and not just Emma’s.  
  
It’s too much, and so she opens her eyes as Emma starts nudging her backwards toward the bed-- _their_  bed--and toys with the hem of the dress, slowly riding it up a little and then stroking absently at the warm skin she’s revealing.  
  
In one part of her head, Daniel was her first, here.  
  
In another, this moment--the one she’s  _living_ right now, not just remembering--actually marks the first time she’ll  _ever_ be this close to someone who actually  _loves_  her.  
  
Structured on lies or not,   _she_ is real here, now--and that means all of it is, in one way or another.  
  
The dress is lifted over her head, and Emma flattens her hair a little with a fond look, before smiling in an almost shy way.  “I don’t know why I bother--we both know what it’ll look like within the next hour.”  
  
It’s an innocuous comment, but it reminds Regina of the life that they’ve supposedly built together; one where the blundering, red-hot creature in front of her is cogent of the little things that set her off and actually minds them.  
  
She might not love Emma--at all, let alone in the way that her memories suggest to her that she  _should_ \--but looking at the gentle desire in her eyes as they dart up and down, from navel to hairline, for one second Regina actually thinks that it’s not impossible that she  _could_ have, at some point.  
  
That is what different lives mean, after all.  
  
“You’re wearing too many clothes by far, dear,” she says, when the moment fades and she goes back to feeling as little as she can; it sounds like the kind of thing that she might’ve said to a lover that she was fully herself with.    
  
The gentle instruction seems to unlatch something in Emma’s stasis, in any event, because the corners of her mouth turn up with unbridled joy, and then, within moments, they are both naked.  
  
…  
  
When she blindly stares at the ceiling, afterwards--as Emma catches her breath, with a few hot puffs of air right on her clavicle--all she can think is that the universe is exponentially vast, and she may never understand her own place in it.  
  
…  
  
Her thighs burn; whether it’s riding or  _Emma_  is hard to say, but she realizes how little exercise she’s had in the last thirty years when she cannot sit down on Killian’s sofa without wincing.  
  
The rest of her, however, feels more limber than she has in a long while, because Emma’s attentions earlier had been ceaseless; unlike Leopold, for whom she’d faked proceedings to his satisfaction with ease, Emma had heavily focused on her enjoyment, seemingly unwilling to stop until it reached the desired height.  That had meant closing her eyes and giving herself up to years 1996 to 2000 as they now reside in her mind; losing herself in false memories of Daniel that proved more powerful than anything she herself has ever been able to imagine.  
  
Her orgasm had been weak, more like a surrender than a triumph, but... Emma had caused it.  On every level, no matter how she conceptualizes her new existence, Emma had  _caused_  it.  
  
The thought makes her feel unsettled in a way she rarely has.  It makes her want to shower a few more times just to rinse away the events of the day completely.  It makes her want to believe that it had been  _awful_ , but her body and its newfound lassitude betray her, sinking into the burgundy couch cushions, muscles behaving as if the first drink she is about to have is actually the fifth.  
  
Ruby settles next to her, patting her on the thigh in a way that’s absently familiar, and then starts cutting the deck at a pace that seems almost professional.  Whatever it is that the wolf-girl does in this realm, it’s possibly  _not_ waiting tables at her grandmother’s diner, and Regina makes a mental note to find out before it’s apparent that she  _doesn’t_.  
  
Killian hands her a glass of scotch and then settles across from her, crossing long legs at the ankle and holding a martini glass full of something bright red.  He swirls it around once or twice and then looks at the room’s other occupants--a young man with reddish-brown hair that Regina cannot place, but the mischievous smirk that plays around his lips constantly suggests that he’s a trickster of some kind; and, to her surprise, Eugenia Lucas, who is cutting cigars for herself and Killian and then reaches for a Zippo on the table, practiced and comfortable.  
  
“Okay;  I’ll deal first, we go clockwise with first bets placed by Peter...” Ruby says, before sighing and saying, “We all  _know_  how we’re playing, don’t we?”  
  
Killian grins slowly and then says, “I feel lucky tonight.  Given that someone else obviously got lucky-- _ow_ \--”  
  
“Sorry,” Ruby says, with a sharp smile.  “My heel slipped.”  
  
“Into my  _shin_ \--”  
  
“The scar should remind you to behave, young man,” Eugenia says, before taking her cards and peering over her glasses at the stranger at the table.  “Peter, are you raising?”  
  
Peter-- _Pan,_ she suspects, and there is some sort of history between himself and Hook that she’ll have to consult the library on, later--narrows his eyes briefly and then tosses two chips onto the center of the table.  “Do I ever  _not_?”  
  
“It’s never  _never_  with you,” Ruby declares, sucking a cherry out of her glass and then adding her chips onto the pile, before producing a perfectly knotted stem and flicking that across to Killian.  “Seriously, though--don’t tease Regina.  You know she gets violent when you do.”  
  
“I highly doubt I’ll resort to fisticuffs over your boyfriend’s juvenile assertions, dear,” Regina says, shifting forward with a wince as it’s her turn to bet; her hand is awful, but she virtually invented half the people at this table, and should know how to read them without any real difficulties.  
  
“Oh, I don’t mean  _that_ ,” Ruby says, laughing a little and then slinging an arm around her shoulder.  At this rate, she should be used to everyone in town touching her by next  _week_.  “I mean that you’ll clean us all out.”  
  
“As you do every week,” Peter notes, with a small, dramatic sigh.  
  
“Perhaps not this one,” Regina says, leaning back and assessing what the flop will bring her; her best card, fortunately or otherwise, is a single queen of diamonds.  
  
They raise and call quietly for a round, the cigar smoke across the table filtering upward, and Granny is the first to fold on the turn.  Then, Ruby flips the river, and Regina finds herself unexpectedly face to face with the queen of hearts.  
  
After a second, she looks at Killian, who looks at her like they’ve known each other since they first learned how to ride bicycles, but also like he’d never do anything to exploit those mutual weaknesses.  Not over a friendly game of  _poker,_ anyway.  
  
“All in,” she says, sliding her chips towards the middle, before smiling at him and raising her eyebrows.  
  
…  
  
When she returns home, it’s to the sight of Henry conked out--mouth open, wet spot growing on Emma’s shirt--against Emma’s side and David and Mary Margaret cuddling together on the other side of the sofa.    
  
If she wasn’t two sheets to the wind--like some tawdry pirate wench, knocking back ale at a tavern somewhere in the lower countries--the sight of that family spread out on her sofa would have been enough to make her snap.  It might have compelled her to rip the mirror between the mail desk and the hat stand right off the wall and smash it over Emma’s head; it might have compelled her to finally  rip Snow White’s heart out of her chest with a pair of tongs and then toss it into the fireplace, to crackle and burn there until with one final, gasping breath, the little bitch simply expired.  
  
As it is, however, she is quite drunk, and cannot get her boots off without falling against the wall, and Emma looks over at her and starts laughing, which wakes up Mary Margaret, who then sits up sharply enough for David to jolt and say, “What?”, until finally Henry rubs at his eyes and says, “Wait--did the movie finish?”  
  
In the hallway, Regina considers the various ways she would love to kill everyone in that room  _but_  Henry, and then catches sight of the look on his face when he sees  _her_ , and knows she will never kill again at all.  
  
“Hey there, card shark,” Emma says, sitting up and letting Henry flop to the other side of the couch, onto Mary Margaret’s lap, who ruffles his hair until he squirms out of her hold and then joins Emma on her feet.  “Need a hand?”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Regina says, curtly, and then flaps a hand towards the television.  “Finish your entertainment.  I am  _fine_.  I am merely going to--”  
  
She doesn’t bother finishing, just drops the one boot she’s managed to get off on the floor and heads towards the kitchen with a limp--muscle strain exacerbated by the various times she nearly fell on the walk home--and pours herself a glass of water.  Some part of her can already tell that this was  _not_  dignified, let alone suitable for Henry’s eyes, and the rest of her would just very much like the kitchen island to stop dancing.    
  
It does, when Henry pokes his head around the corner and says, “Ma says to eat a banana for your stomach thing.”  
  
The idea of a hangover is unpleasant, but somehow also  _fine_.  It’ll be an excuse that will get Emma to leave her alone for at least a day, she’s quite sure, but when Henry looks at her expectantly, she heads for the fruit bowl and starts peeling one of the four bananas in there anyway.    
  
“What movie did you watch, dear?” she asks, as he shuffles in on his socks and leans against the island on the other side.  
  
“ _Night at the Museum_.  It’s the one about--like, statues and animals in a museum come alive and stuff.”  
  
“Hmm,” she says, and takes a bite of the banana, which makes him glow with some sort of gentle approval.  Tomorrow, she’ll berate herself for drinking this much, for taking the  _escape_ that the alcohol had offered, but for now, she is having a moment with her son, who takes his own banana and starts slowly pulling it back the peel.  
  
“It was pretty stupid.  I mean, it’s about this old curse from Egypt--that’s how everything comes alive, even the dinosaurs, but--if you were going to make a curse, why would you have it do  _that_?” Henry then says, and when he frowns at her he looks so much like his biological mother that Regina doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry.  
  
 _Miss Swan figuring out dinner; her son figuring out curses._  
  
“I think I liked  _The Mummy_  better,” Henry then says, before peering up at her.  “That one has a bunch of sequels so maybe we can watch one of those, this Sunday.”  
  
“Sunday?” she says, taking another bite of her banana and swallowing it quickly.  
  
“Yeah--you know.  You and me day,” Henry says, before tilting his head.  “Wow, you’re really not feeling good, are you?  I’ll get Ma.”  
  
He skids out of the kitchen in a way that, if she’d been sober, she would’ve told him  _not_  to do, but he gets away with it and a few seconds later, Emma sticks her head around the corner and says, “Banana?”  
  
Regina holds it up, like it’s a trophy.  
  
Emma smirks faintly.  “Did you win, dear?”  
  
On some level, she knows she’s being mocked, but on another level, she has a  _you and me day_  with her son and she just says, “Of course.”  
  
“There we go,” Emma says, looking pleased for her in a way that’s utterly pointless, but then Emma points at the banana and says, “Finish it.  I don’t want to hear you bitching on the side of the field tomorrow about how your head hurts, and I  _really_  don’t want you taking that headache out on those kids.”  
  
Regina rolls her eyes, but dutifully eats the rest of her banana, as two voices she’d just as soon never hear again call out a few goodbyes from the hallway, and Emma casually waves her parents out of the house--and she’s _so very relaxed_  about it, the blessings of amnesia--before saying, “I’ll get Henry settled tonight, but he’s all yours the rest of this weekend.”  
  
 _Thank you_ , Regina almost says, but then just shoves the rest of the banana in her mouth before she can do anything that she knows she’ll regret in the morning.

…  
  
On Sunday, she and Henry ride.  
  
They prepare a picnic basket together and take it out into the woods, before settling by the creek there and letting the horses drink some and graze around freely.  Henry’s mount of choice is a old, tame white mare named Coral, who bred with her own Rocinante in the past.  Said offspring is referred to by her son as  _Little Mills_ , and as Henry drinks some Diet Coke--a Sunday treat, it seems, and not one she’s willing to spoil when all of this is part of a tradition between them--and talks about how he thinks that his team is going to do really well in the league this year, Regina contemplates what it actually means to have a happy ending.  
  
“We have the best coaches, anyway, so--” he says, before shrugging and then feeling around the blanket they’re on until he can wrap his fingers around a stone and send it skipping across the creek.  “Everyone thinks so.  Ma’s pretty good at demonstrating what to do and you’re like--you know that Bobby’s dad calls you um, who’s that famous general?  The one from the civil war who’s named after that book you hate.”  
  
“Grant,” she says, after a moment.    
  
“Yeah,” Henry says, “Because he also rode horses and you’re both really good with tactics.”  
  
It’s a strange little compliment, but it’s one that settles within her with such ease that she has to remind herself that she’s cursed her son to feel this way.  
  
She can’t even pretend that she ever would’ve wanted him to see her for what she really is--but Emma would have, once.  The real Emma would’ve pulled him aside to tell him that nothing in life was ever going to be perfect, least of all his mothers.  The new Emma no longer feels the need to tell him anything of the sort, because even with a few losses to process, even with yet another childhood without family, this Emma believes in perfection.  
  
On this particular Sunday, on the first of the infinite  _you and me days_  that Emma’s dangerously reckless wishful thinking has brought her,  Regina looks at her son and feels herself thaw.  For just a few moments, as Henry finishes his drink and then tentatively brings up advanced riding classes, looking at her with both trust  _and_  respect, she allows herself to forget that none of this is hers to keep.


	4. Chapter 4

_Three_  
  
…  
  
One week turns into the next.    
  
Her days commence with habit and end with habit.  On days where Emma's slept well, she sings while attempting a breakfast and kisses Regina before she leaves.  On days where she’s slept poorly, Emma grunts on her way to the shower and stands under it for half an hour as Regina and Henry enjoy a quiet breakfast, just the two of them.  Like before.  
  
She’s been surviving in this new realm for two whole weeks by the time it occurs to her that she could, potentially, just  _divorce_  Emma.  Divorce is something that is  _done_  in this realm, whichever version of it they’re inhabiting at any particular point in time.  Kathryn and David had been heading down that path, regardless of how much she willed them to stay together; as soon as Emma Swan had set foot in Storybrooke, the timer on that particular arrangement had started counting down, or so it had seemed.  
  
Divorce is an option.  It’s so simple, in fact, that she never considered it at all.  The laws of this land have done little but help Emma and hinder her to this date, and so they haven’t felt like a recourse--but they obviously  _are_.  
  
She can rid herself of the girl without harming anyone, and whatever custody arrangements they would end up with, Henry would be hers  _half_  the time, undoubtedly.  
  
Two weeks ago he wasn’t hers at all, and perhaps it’s a sign that she’s only half--or a third, one portion eked out for each life lived--the woman she used to be, but  _half_  seems like an awful lot, right now.    
  
…  
  
These are not decisions to be taken lightly, of course, and so she spends a few weeks doing what counts as preparatory research.  Henry’s well-being comes first, and there are a number of studies that detail what effects divorce can have on a child that bear consideration.  
  
She reads those at her office, under the guise of working through all the quarterly bills and orders that must be dealt with; her booted feet are up on the corner of her desk and her reading glasses are perched on the edge of her nose as she reads peer-reviewed article after peer-reviewed article that suggests that divorce is not  _ideal_.  
  
Neither is having an evil queen for a mother, nor is being tugged in half by some sort of epic struggle between good and evil.  Neither is living an utter lie, which is what he is doing now--and that after all those promises she made to him, promises that said  _never again, Henry_.  
  
The emotions she and Emma both project at him are absolutely genuine, but everything else about his family life is a wish-you-were-here Hallmark card, or a commercial for a trip to Disney World; something Emma must have fantasized about as a child and is now giving to  _her_  child.  
  
Is  _that_  ideal?  
  
She closes the most recent of her findings--suggesting that the  _key_  to successful divorce is honest communication, which is hardly something she and Emma have ever struggled with; they’ve been ever so violently honest--and then heads to the stables, hands tucked in pockets as the world around her slowly begins to freeze.  With every step she takes the ground crackles, as if the very earth is trying to tell her that everything she contemplates is ruinous.  
  
The sight of Rocinante calms her, as does the lilting encouragement in Killian’s voice as he guides six year olds around the pen, horses on leads and hooves digging small pits into the splintering sand.  
  
 _Ideal_  was never an option for her in this world, nor any other, but as Henry would say,  _you always have to do your best_.  
  
Divorce is the closest she can come to  _the truth_ , for now.    
  
She runs her bare hand along Rocinante’s flank before reaching for the treat  basket and holding out an apple for him.  With every chomp he takes, teeth crushing straight through flesh, her resolve swells.  
  
…  
  
“ _What_?” Kathryn says, fork freezing comically halfway to her mouth.  
  
“I don’t want to repeat myself, and I know you heard me,” Regina says quietly, cogent of the fact that they are not alone in the diner, and unsure of who, exactly, counts as Emma’s  _friend_  in this newly revived Storybrooke.  The entire town had favored her, both pre-and-post her grand rescue, but it had made the sheriff uncomfortable enough to be so idolized that perhaps, this new world comes with greater balance.  
  
Kathryn and Killian, in any event, like  _her_.  As does Mary Margaret, who forwards her emails with recipes and ridiculous chain messages such as  _forward this to ten people you love and your future children will be blessed!_   That one, she’d almost responded to with a snide  _don’t bother--your child will be blessed regardless_ , but of course her tone wouldn’t translate well to type, at which point it would’ve just sounded.... congratulatory.  
  
The point is, Kathryn genuinely likes her, but is now staring at her like she’s lost her mind.  It’s vaguely amusing.  “But...  _why_?”  
  
Regina takes a deep breath and then digs her fork into a slice of wholesome apple pie, twisting it around until the apple turns to pulp.  “I don’t... think we are meant to be together.  It isn’t working.”  
  
“The hell it isn’t,” Kathryn says, tilting her head with a disapproving little slant.  “Regina, come on.  I’ve known you  _how_  long now?”  
  
“Since before 1984,” Regina says, even though the question is rhetorical and that answer is absurd.  
  
Kathryn frowns at her, but then shakes her head-- _spells are a wonderful thing,_ Regina thinks--and says, “You can’t be serious.  You two are great together; you’re the happiest you’ve been--”  
  
“Kathryn, I don’t need a pep talk on the merits of our union; I want to know about my legal options, given that we were married in Massachusetts but neither of us reside there and Maine’s equivalent marriage legislation hasn’t yet entered into force.”  
  
Kathryn says nothing for a moment; just stares at her chai latte, and then hisses, “You realize this puts me in a very awkward position, don’t you?”  
  
“The town hardly teems with family lawyers, dear--”  
  
“Oh my  _God_ ,” Kathryn says, sitting back in her chair and staring at her with a sort of muted horror; the kind of looks Regina really should be used to by now, but never will be.  “Is this because--”  
  
Regina looks back placidly, and after a few moments Kathryn reaches for her purse and starts rummaging through it.  
  
“Okay, you know what--we let you get away with this back in the day; you said you didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, and Kill and I both thought that it’d be best to just--trust your judgment and be supportive, but I _know_  that next month, it’ll be ten years, and I think that--”  
  
If she still possessed magic, even a shred of it, the mugs in front of them would be sailing across the room right now.  As it is, she can at best clench her teeth together enough to stop shaking and then grind out, “This is  _not_ about him.”  
  
“About  _who?_ ”  Kathryn says, with no small hint of challenge.  
  
“You know who--”  
  
“God, Regina, can you even say his  _name_?” Kathryn says, all anger swept away by concern, and of course it is.  That is the kind of woman Kathryn Nolan was; that is the kind of princess that Abigail strove to be.  
  
And she  _wants_  to open her mouth,  _wants_  to say that of course she can, that it’s easy to talk about him, but to her own disgust and horror, all she can think of is finding him-- _both times,_ both times she’d been the first--and realizing that no end of kissing, no end of praying or wishing or  _magic_  or science, could bring him back.  This was distant, once, but it is there all the time now; reawakened every time her wife wants to  _be_  with her and she can only get through the proceedings by pretending they are something they are not.  
  
Thirty years have passed, and  _all_  she is, all she’ll ever be, is pretending.  
  
She squeezes her eyes shut before any moisture can betray her emotional state, but it’s futile; Kathryn is her best friend of thirty years as well, and Kathryn just reaches for her hand and then presses a sharp-edged paper rectangle in it.  
  
“He’s very good at what he does, a very nice man, and he’s very discreet, Regina; Fred and I went to see him after--”  
  
The sentence trails off, and Regina’s eyes open again at the recollection of Frederick on the phone at five in the morning:  _she’s at the hospital it’s not good Regina I don’t really know what to do with her we’ve both wanted this child so much but they say that if we don’t if we don’t if we don’t_  
  
Emma’s notions of  _ideal_  have never been  _flawless_.  They have all lived and lost, tears have been shed and battles waged, but they’ve somehow all overcome with a subtle type of contentment.  This is a world of small victories, not large ones.  
  
“I’m--if this is  _really_  what you want, of course I’ll help you,” Kathryn says, managing a quiver of a smile despite obviously being lost in her own darkest hours; the ones in this life, anyway.  “I’m not going to say anything trite, like that you  _belong_  together, but--don’t rush into this.  Talk to Dr. Hopper.  Okay?”  
  
Perhaps it’s just that she owes this woman more than she can even articulate, in terms of an apology, or perhaps it’s that Kathryn truly is the only legal representation she can get in the town she’s created.  It’s not worth dwelling on, because either way she is compelled to follow Kathryn's suggestion.  
  
When she takes the card, it throbs in her hand like a warning.  
  
…  
  
She’s dropped Henry off and picked Henry up from this office more times than she can remember, always hovering as he trudged back down the stairs towards the car and hoping for some sort of sign,  _any sign,_ from Archie that improvement was forthcoming.  
  
There have also been times when she herself has been a patient here, struggling to keep magic contained in her body and talking of it as if it was a form of drug dependency that she was trying to kick.  
  
The one constant, always, has been the fact that the cricket is an excellent listener, and there have never been many who truly have been willing to listen to her at all. Not unless forced to, anyway.  Not without cataclysmic efforts on her own part to be heard.  
  
Regina can’t say she’s missed Archie, exactly, but out of all the people that she owes apologies to, he has reminded her of it the least.  Her relationship with him, if it can even be called that, is also one of very few that hasn’t changed in her latest rebirth; she remains a patient, willing or otherwise, and he remains a doctor, fictive or otherwise.  
  
She feigns an appropriate amount of curiosity at stepping into his office, and only manages to stop feigning discomfort at the last minute.  When she had been the mayor, there had been  _shame_  in being forced to drag her son in for counseling, and when she had been a deposed Evil Queen, there had been a muted type of panic--as if a  _she’s trying_  from Dr. Hopper could stave off the guillotine for another few hours.  
  
There isn’t any need for discomfort now, and so she shakes his hand and sits down on his sofa, as he leans back in a comfortable chair on the other side of his coffee table, lined with magazines and a jar of sweets for his younger patients.  She can’t imagine he has too many; this version of Storybrooke lacks in dysfunction and misery in a way that her own never had.  
  
She crosses her legs, wishing for something more comfortable than jean fabric for the millionth time since she woke up in a bed with Emma Swan, and then just fiddles with the ends of the scarf she tied around her neck this morning.  
  
“What brings you here, Regina?” Archie asks, after a few seconds of studying her expressionlessly.  His tone is exactly what she imagined it would be, back in the day: open without being pushy, not too cloying or sympathetic.  
  
She mentally congratulates herself on doing an excellent job of designing her own would-be therapist, and then takes a deep breath.  “I’m contemplating leaving my wife and I wanted to talk to someone about how a divorce between us would affect Henry.”  
  
Archie looks back at her evenly, before carefully repeating, “You want to talk about how you leaving your wife affects your  _son_.”  
  
“Yes,” she says, staring back at him.  “I’ve been doing some reading on it but I wanted an expert opinion on whether or not this would be damaging for his development.  I know you don’t know my son--”  
  
“Well, that’s usually a sign that he’s developing well,” Archie says, with a small smile.  
  
It’s unintentional, of course, the way she just feels like she’s been slapped in the face, but it still takes more effort than it should to smile back.  “Henry is doing very well, yes.  I would like to make sure that he continues to.”  
  
Archie takes off his glasses after a second and starts polishing them,  his eyebrows drawing close as he visibly thinks through what she’s saying.  It’s a habit he’s had in both lives, but never has it made her feel this on edge; not even when she was close to setting his entire office on fire just because all of his talk about how she was making  _strides_  wasn’t bringing her a single step closer to Henry.  
  
“If I tell you that your divorce will negatively impact your son, what would you do?” he then asks.  
  
She hesitates.  “Well--”  
  
“You’d stay with your wife, for his sake?”  
  
She exhales in a small huff.  “If you’re implying that that would be as detrimental for him as a separation would--”  
  
Archie smiles faintly, before sliding his glasses back in place.  “Do you  _think_  that that’s what I’m implying?”  
  
“Dr. Hopper, I’m a  _very_  busy woman and I’m not here to be entertained with rhetorical questions or psychological games--” she says, just about managing to not snap it at him.  
  
He laughs, and then leans forward a little.  “I’m sorry.  Sometimes, patients figure out the answers to their questions on their own, but if you’d like a more direct assessment--”  
  
“Please.”  
  
“Mrs. Swan, you just told me,  _very_ point blank, that you’re considering divorcing your wife; you don’t seem  _upset_  about it.  You’re acting like this is... no different than selling a house on shaky foundations.  And now you’d like to know if selling the house that’s falling down is going to affect your child, because if it  _is_ , you’ll just stay living in it.  Does that sound healthy to you?”  
  
Her teeth gnash together before she looks at him, sharply, and says, “It’s more complicated than it sounds.”  
  
“Well, gosh, I’d hope so,” he says, before smiling at her in encouragement.  “You two have been together for--what, nearly six years now?”  
  
She sighs.  “Not quite five.”  
  
“And of those five years--how many were happy?”  
  
It’s infuriating to not be able to tell the truth, and she shifts in sheer frustration.  Lying has never been a problem for her, but it’s always been a  _choice_.  Now, the best she can do is admit that, “I think that for a very long time, we fooled ourselves into thinking that we were both happy.”  
  
“You think that your wife has had the same experience of your marriage?” he asks.  
  
She tips her head back and stares at the wood paneling overhead and then closes her eyes.  “No, she’s loved every minute of it.  Our relationship is everything she’s ever dreamed of.”  
  
Archie clears his throat after a second.  “You sound... angry about that.”  
  
“Well, it’s not everything  _I’ve_  ever dreamed of,” she says, before opening her eyes again and looking at him.  “If it was, dear, I doubt I’d be considering  _divorce_.”  
  
That earns her a few nods and then Archie says, “Can you articulate in what ways it’s lacking?  Your relationship, I mean?”  
  
She fights the urge to sigh again.  “We’re fundamentally incompatible as people.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
The clock on the wall behind Archie ticks loudly and makes her fingertips spasm on her lap, and after a few moments she says, “Emma is... impulsive, headstrong, opinionated,  _stubborn_ , intensely persuaded of her own righteousness,  _loud_ , brash, sanctimonious, invasive--”  
  
“Please, don’t hold back,” Archie says, when she struggles to come up with more adjectives.  
  
She scoffs, and then just shakes her head.  “She’s--absolutely  _nothing_  like the person that I would’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with.”  
  
Archie takes that in silently for a few moments, and then carefully says, “Mrs. Swan, you  _did_  choose her.”  
  
Seconds pass without her saying anything, and then she sighs.  “It wasn’t--I suppose it made  _sense_  for us to be together.  Because of Henry.”  
  
“But she wasn’t your first choice.”  
  
The lump that seems to just teleport into her throat at the mere mention of her  _choices_  swells horribly, and she has to swallow past it several times before she can say, “No, she wasn’t.  I  _had_  my first choice, and--”  
  
“Here’s the thing, Mrs. Swan,” Archie says, when her lips glue together and absolutely forbid her to continue.  “I try to discourage people from thinking about life as being... about one destined path, with one clear shot at happiness.  I strongly feel that happiness is something that we can create for ourselves, sometimes in surprising ways, if we’re just open to the possibility of it.”  
  
 _Happiness, if you think you can still manage it_ , Rumpelstiltskin had said.  
  
She stares unseeingly at the table for a while and twists the rings on her left hand, until the small gem is hidden and all she’s left with is two bands, almost as thick as one ring she thought she could never live without.  
  
“I don’t love my wife, Dr. Hopper,” she then says, swallowing once more and then looking at him plainly.  “First choice or not, I don’t think we’re headed for happiness without love.”  
  
Archie’s expression grows serious at those words, and then he says, “What do you mean by that?”  
  
“By what?”  
  
“By the word  _love_?  What is  _love_  to you, Mrs. Swan?”  
  
“I--” she starts to say, but all she can see is Henry; a boy who might grow up to look like the man she wished she could have raised him with.  A boy who already looks like his birth mother.  A boy who takes after Regina herself in not a single way, it seems.  
  
“Do you think that all love is the same?”  
  
She laughs, bitterly, and then says, “Of course not.  There’s  _true_  love, and then there’s--whatever  _ordinary_  people get, I suppose.”  
  
“And you and your husband--that was the real deal?” Archie asks, so gently that she cannot bring herself to explode at him, however much her blood is roiling underneath the surface of her skin right now.  
  
The best she can do is utter a single, still, “Yes”, so small that it’s barely audible over the sound of Archie breathing.  
  
Archie shifts, until his knees are almost jammed up against the coffee table, and then softly says, “Grief manifests itself in strange ways.  Sometimes, the only way we can cope with loss is to pretend that it never took place at all--and when we can't do that anymore, when we  _finally_  open our eyes again, it’s like we’re living in a world that we don’t even recognize.”  
  
She stares at him, wondering if by some chance he might--  
  
“That can be alarming; it can be traumatizing, even.”  He pushes at the bridge of his glasses, and then looks at her so seriously that she stops breathing.  “Mrs. Swan--”  
  
“For God’s sake, please call me Regina,” she says, her voice cracking on her own name.  
  
“ _Regina_ ,” he repeats, wringing his hands together and then looking at her in a way that seems almost pitying.  “Can I be honest with you?”  
  
“With how much you charge per hour, I’d be offended if you weren’t,” she says, archly, but her hands shake in her lap a little still, and his gaze doesn’t waver.  
  
“I can think of what you’ve told me, in the last few minutes, in two ways.  To so... clinically talk about the dissolution of a long-term relationship suggests that you’re either suffering from an antisocial personality disorder,  _or_ there’s something else going on with you.”  
  
He lets those words hang, looking at her questioningly; she stares back evenly.  “I’m not a  _sociopath,_ Dr. Hopper.”  
  
“No, I don’t think you are either,” he says, flashing her a small, empathic smile.  “You obviously care deeply about your son.  It’s just your wife that you’re treating as an obstacle rather than a  _person_.  The thing is, though, a lot of the time, the things we see as obstacles are actually just things we  _fear_.”  
  
She sucks in a deep breath through her nose and then says, “Meaning?”  
  
“Meaning... that it’s very possible that you’re afraid of how you feel about her.  The mayor, I mean.”  
  
She laughs again, before she can stop herself.  If this had been the old Storybrooke, he would’ve heard the warning in that laughter and heeded it, but here, she’s just a thirty-something year old horse wrangler, a wife and a mother.  She’s  _nothing_.  Emma has seen to that in a way that Snow never could have done.  
  
“You’re welcome to tell me that I’m wrong, of course--but it sounds to me like you’re facing the very real fear that Emma might actually be taking the place of your late husband--”  
  
She’s off the sofa in a flash, and the words blow out of her as if they’re pure fire, wielded in her hand and flung at him without any concern for his life.  “She could  _never_  take his place.  _Do you understand me_?  She could _never_  replace him; even  _she_ understands that and she doesn’t know a single goddamned thing  _about him_.”  
  
If she could use magic, he’d be dead by now.  She’s shaking, and her chest is heaving as though she is going to either throw up or cry, but she won’t let herself.  This is all the power she has, now--an illusory sense of composure--and she will cling to what's left of it.  
  
“How long has it been, Regina?” Archie asks, before also slowly getting to his feet.  “Since you lost him?”  
  
She lets her nails dig into the palms of her hands and takes a few more breaths and then says, “A long time.  It’s a matter of public record, isn’t it?”  
  
Archie nods, and for a moment, she wonders what would’ve happened to her if she’d had him around forty years ago; if she’d  _used_  him thirty years ago.  If she’d given him a chance to listen, and if she’d let herself talk about any of this.  
  
“I think we should set up a weekly appointment,” he then says, before offering her a hand again, as if she’s not completely losing it in front of him.  “You're struggling with some understandably difficult emotions--”  
  
She laughs weakly, and then rubs at her eyes before staring at his hand again and then limply shaking it.  “In your professional assessment, of course.”  
  
He gives her the smallest of encouraging nods.  “We’ll get to the bottom of what has you feeling like this, Regina.  I promise.”  
  
It’s a promise he can’t keep, but she can hardly hold that against him.  
  
…  
  
When she gets home, Emma’s in the shower and Henry’s playing a videogame in the living room, and she sits down next to him and watches a young boy--cartoonish, but somehow similar to Henry; perhaps what Henry would’ve been had he grown up in the other realm--with a sword and a shield hack his way through lines of enemies.  The purpose of the game, which she can’t remember the name of, is to rescue a princess.    
  
A part of her thinks that Emma would find the whole setup offensive-- _the princess can save herself, kid_ \--and the rest of her just wonders how it is that no matter what lives they live, what realms they exist in, certain latent traits always manifest themselves.  
  
She will never be able to control her rage, not fully, and her son will always seek adventure, and as for Emma...  
  
As if on cue, the doorbell rings, and she gets back up to her feet after running her hand along the back of Henry’s head.  He leans into it here; doesn’t squirm away, doesn’t stiffen as if she might hit him--and she  _never_ , ever has, which made that reflex all the more painful--and doesn’t sulk about needing to go finish homework the minute she acknowledges him.  He leans into her hand, and then ducks around her and says, “Mom, you’re totally blocking the--”  
  
“I know, dear,” she says, stepping around him and feeling the faint throb in her chest--ripped open, however unintentionally, by Dr. Hopper; cracked in half as if she’d been in the midst of surgery--dissipate again.  
  
Her son is so achingly normal in this world.  It’s the best possible outcome for him, and it settles something in  _her_ , too.  It will never justify what she and Emma did, but it makes it bearable, the way that Henry had made the gaping hole in her heart in the old version of Storybrooke bearable as well.  
  
Emma may have saved  _everyone_ , but this ten year old boy is what saved her--and so it is for his sake, as she opens the door and feels her spine grow rigid at the sight of the root cause of her several lives’ worth of problems, that she pastes on a smile.  
  
“Mary Margaret.  What brings you here?”  
  
…  
  
Emma is still toweling her hair dry and then sinks onto the couch next to her, before wincing and fishing Henry’s video game controller out from under her thigh.  At the prospect of  _girl talk,_ her son has made himself scarce--and for a second, Regina wishes she too could get away with making a foul face and then slinking up the stairs to go and read a book far away from this setting.  
  
Mary Margaret explicitly requested to talk to  _both_  of them, however, nervously shifting from foot to foot in the doorway, and now that she’s perched onto the edge of the other sofa, with her hands rubbing together in front of her stomach, Regina suspects she knows why.  
  
It’s the  _oddest_  type of unintended triumph; a form of vengeance that has never occurred to Regina.  It would sicken Snow to her very core, to realize she was sitting here about to  _confide_  in the woman who tried to ruin her life and destroy her family, but it’s exactly what she’s going to do, thanks to her own daughter.    
  
Emma drapes her wet towel over the side of the couch and then says, “Okay--uh, if you don’t start talking soon I’m going to think that you’re sick or something--”  
  
“Oh, no--” Mary Margaret says, looking immediately worried and then firmly shaking her head.  “No, God, Emma--I’m fine.  I promise.  David’s fine, too.”  
  
“We’re all fine,” Regina says, and then just because Snow is  _right there_ , watching them, slings an arm around Emma’s back and rubs at her shoulder, at a knot that Emma’s been prodding at herself for the last two days.  Audit neck, she’s called it.  Regina is intimately familiar and not envious.  
  
“Yes,” Mary Margaret agrees, as one of her hands strays towards her stomach.  “We’re--more than fine, actually.  We’re  _great_.  I mean, there’s been a few things lately that have been less than great, but they’re part of the process--”  
  
“The process,” Emma repeats, rolling her shoulder as Regina pokes at it.  
  
 _If only you knew,_ Regina thinks, staring at her wife’s mother and digging her thumb in a little harder, until Emma shifts in closer with a soft noise of approval.  
  
“Yes.  Apparently,  _some_  women are fortunate enough to make it through the first three months  _without_  throwing up all over the place, but you weren’t and--”  
  
“You’re pregnant,” Emma says, and Regina can’t help but study Emma’s reaction, because this is amnesia in action at its finest, isn’t it?  The original news, when broadcast, had taken Emma directly to a bottle of vodka, before sending her crawling up the steps to her enemy’s house,  _begging_  for a way to not have to deal with these joyous tidings.  
  
This time, Emma’s eyes well up and then she smiles in that blisteringly beautiful way that all princesses made of true love can do, and Regina feels her hand turn almost claw-like at the sight of it.  
  
“We didn’t want to jinx it,” Mary Margaret says, chewing on her lip and then also wiping at her eyes.  “You know we’ve--we haven’t been lucky, before, but it’s been three months and I’m going to start showing soon and I wanted you to be the first to know.  Both of you.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Emma says, flying off the couch and stumbling around the coffee table to hug her mother.  Regina’s hand drops down to the couch cushion below, and she watches as they cling to each other.  It’s a connection she’s deprived them of; it’s something  _Emma_  has deprived them of, too, but no matter what realm they live in, something pulls Emma right back towards her parents regardless.  
  
“Congratulations, dear,” Regina says, when Mary Margaret looks at her from over Emma’s shoulder.  
  
“Thank you,” Mary Margaret says, the way young Snow had once said it, when she’d agreed to marry her father and become a stand-in for an infallible mother.  It twists ugly, that sentiment coming from this woman, and Regina feels abruptly ill all over again at the notion that once again, Snow gets  _everything_  she wants, all at once.  
  
“Um--shit, I was going to say that we should probably toast, but you can’t drink,” Emma says, pulling away and then staring with obvious wonder at Mary Margaret’s flat stomach.  “Maybe a cup of apple juice while we hit up the liquor?  Regina--do we have any champagne in the house--”  
  
“I’ll check,” Regina says, smoothly rising from the couch and heading out of the room; just in time for her to hide the way her face contorts.  Here she is, burying Daniel all over again, and Snow is  _still_  running around, sweeping victory after victory.  Even having lost the child she’s already  _had_ , she’s somehow still living out a fairy tale existence.  
  
A bottle of not-too-expensive champagne’s in the wine rack in the fridge, and she pops it the way that her father once would’ve done for her.  The cork shoots off towards a kitchen cabinet with enough force to satisfy her, just a little, but by the time she’s poured two flutes and a glass of apple juice, she feels her entire body strain with nervous energy once more.  Magic where there is none, she thinks, and throws back a glass of champagne before it can become any more evident that she is  _not_  okay.  
  
When she returns to the living room, it’s to the sight of Emma touching a cardigan that will not betray movement just yet; without comments, she hands over glasses and looks at the fireplace, willing this entire scene to end.  
  
“David and I wanted to ask you both something,” Mary Margaret says, cupping the apple juice when Emma sits back and they’ve clinked their glasses together.  
  
“Sure, you can absolutely name the baby Emma,” Emma says, with a little grin.  “I think it’s a pretty great name, personally--”  
  
Regina drains the rest of her second glass of champagne to not start twitching in that anxious,  _double lives!_  way that is sometimes impossible to control.  
  
Mary Margaret smiles and then takes a deep breath.  “We were hoping you would be the baby’s godparents.”  
  
It’s an unstoppable impulse; the liquid just sprays out of her mouth, all over Emma and at least in part over the couch and onto the white rug below.  She covers her mouth as soon as she’s done, but even that is at least five seconds too late; Emma turns to look at her with a mixture of censure and horror, and Mary Margaret just freezes altogether, staring at her in shock.  
  
She doesn’t know how to hold back laughter this time, with mother and daughter both staring at her with typical disappointment; Snow’s soft and trusting, making the betrayal all the sweeter, and Emma’s a darker brand of the same disapproval.  
  
It’s the most she’s felt like herself in nearly a month of living this life, now, and so she laughs.  
  
…  
  
There’s something satisfyingly familiar about the way that Emma looks when she turns back around after the front door has slammed shut.  It’s familiar in that way that something really, truly  _real_  is; the fear in Snow’s eyes earlier, the disappointment, the  _hurt_ had been the appetizer in terms of genuine emotion that Regina can recall vividly without the aid of any fiches, but this is the main course to a long overdue dinner.  
  
“What was that?” Emma demands, and Regina feels herself grow tall, even if she doesn’t move; just remains seated on her redecorated sofa with a glass of much-needed cider in her hand.  
  
“An honest reaction,” Regina says, evenly.  “She’ll thank me for it one day--”  
  
“What the  _fuck,_ Regina?  You just--” Emma says, before helplessly--but  _so angrily_ , with such delightful upset--pointing a very sharp finger at the front door.  “She’s one of your  _oldest friends_ , and she shows up with news that--you  _know_  how long they’ve been trying to have a baby, how badly they’ve  _wanted_  a baby--”  
  
She laughs again.  It’s been too many weeks of this pretense, too many weeks of stepping around eggshells that deserve to get smashed, and her nerves are frayed and  _nothing_  that Emma has tried to bury is even a little under the soil right now.  It’s all right there, at the front of her mind.  She laughs again, and then says, “Yes.  Yes, they really want a baby.”  
  
“What the  _hell_  is going on with you?  You’ve been acting weird for weeks now and I’ve just been letting it slide because  _everyone_  has been telling me that it’s probably just you finally dealing with the fact that your husband died ten years ago--”  
  
Facts.  They’re just facts, little facts that Emma printed on a fiche.  Facts that ignore that said husband was never a husband, never had a chance to be a husband.  Facts that ignore that he died once before and he came back  _wrong_.  Facts that ignore that back then, she’d had the magic she needed to put him under the ground where he belonged.  Facts that ignore that Emma then pulled him back out,  _ripped_  him from that place where she’d  _finally_  buried him only to make him an even more integral part of her history, because that’s all they are to Emma.  Facts.  
  
The glass tilts in her hand as it goes limp, spraying even yellower liquid over a white rug before she rights it again.  
  
“--no excuse for you to-- _fuck_ ,” Emma snaps, actually stomping her foot at the end.  Her heel breaks, leaving her standing at an awkward angle, and then she just stares at the cider seeping into the rug.  “Aren’t you going to clean that up?  That rug cost--”  
  
“You have no idea what that rug cost,” Regina says, getting to her feet.  
  
“Of course I do, I--” Emma starts, and then it happens.  The anger and shock in her eyes glaze over, just for a second, and then she shakes her head.  “It doesn’t  _matter_.  What matters--”  
  
“Yes.  What matters,” Regina repeats, before sighing and rounding the couch, until she’s only a foot away from Emma and can look at her plainly.  “And what  _does_  matter, dear?  Your friendship with Mary Margaret?   _My_ supposed friendship with--”  
  
“ _Supposed_?”  
  
“I was a part of her life years ago, but she’s  _your_  friend, not mine.  Why you insist that it’s more than that--”  
  
Emma looks taken aback, but still it’s there; that never-ending optimism that runs in her veins, passed down from both strands of the family tree and now also seeping into Henry.  “But you two hang out all the time--”  
  
“For the love of  _God_ , Emma, you cannot will absolutely everything to be the way that  _you_  want it to!” Regina snaps, and watches as the stillest of hurts pass over Emma’s expression.  It’s in the faintest twitch of her nostrils, the way her eyes sharpen slightly, the way her mouth just barely turns out.  It’s nothing, really, except that in twenty eight years, it’s  _never_  happened between them; not in this life, anyway.  
  
As quickly as that hurt appears, it’s gone again.  
  
“Just what is  _that_  supposed to mean?” Emma then asks, in that icy voice that has only ever proceeded their altercations taking a turn for the physical.  
  
“It means that--perhaps I  _don’t_  care to hear Mary Margaret Blanchard whine about her beautiful little life, how  _trying_  it has been for her to get everything perfect.  Perhaps I wish that  _you_  wouldn’t either--God, if you had any idea--”  
  
She has to actually clamp her lips shut and then just shakes her head, before stepping even further into Emma’s space and staring her down.  
  
“It’s  _too much_.  Do you understand that?  You have dragged me into this world, your world full of people and friendship and  _family_ and--”  
  
Emma actually sputters and then says, “ _Dragged_  you?”  
  
“Yes,  _dragged me_ ,” Regina repeats, viciously, watching as Emma’s entire expression darkens.  
  
“ _Right_.  I guess I also  _forced you_  to adopt my son--”  
  
“ _Our son_ ,” Regina snaps.  
  
“Yeah, and  _our life,_ Regina.  You can’t fucking have it  _both ways_ \--either none of this is what you really want, or all of it is.  So what are you saying?”  
  
The argument stops cold at that point, and Regina sucks in a deep breath and then slowly says, “I think we need to make some changes.”  
  
A shrill little laugh works its way up in Emma’s throat.  It’s the same kind of noise she made that one night, that night when this idea was first floated between them; back when Regina had had options and enough common sense to say  _are you out of your mind, Miss Swan?_  and had forced some coffee down the girl’s throat until she could see clearly again.  
  
“ _Changes_.  Is that--some bullshit polite way of saying you want to--that you want--”  
  
Emma literally gags on the very notion, as if something in her wish for happy ending  _forbids_  discussion of unhappy ones.  Instead, she gestures helplessly between their bodies, hand cutting across the small space between them.  
  
Regina opens her mouth to say, “ _Yes_ ” and finds that she can’t.    
  
She tries a second time, and then thinks of all the ways in which her own curse prevented certain outcomes.  No matter how many coffee dates David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard set up, he would always be drawn back home to Kathryn; and no matter how many times Kathryn said that it wasn’t  _working_ , she would always continue to try to save her marriage.  Even with Emma there, they couldn't best the curse while it remained intact.  
  
Regina also remembers wandering into the hospital in her first month of their time in Storybrooke and seeing Charming there, lifeless and gazing up and the ceiling, and remembers slipping a ring into the nightstand in his bedside table and whispering,  _till death do you part, dear_  in his ear, before pressing her lips against his cheek just because she could.  
  
She also remembers Mr. Gold saying  _please_ , and when she manages to get her mouth open, she isn’t even surprised to hear herself say, “No, of course not. Of course I don’t mean--”  
  
Emma’s bottom lip has the slightest tremor in it, but then she squares her shoulders and asks, “What  _do_  you mean?”  
  
“I mean--” Regina says, working her jaw silently for a few seconds and then looking at Emma plainly.  “I mean that I do  _not_  want to be that child’s godparent and I would like to have the freedom to at least make  _that_ choice.”  
  
Emma stares at her silently and then asks, “Why are you so opposed to this?”  
  
There is no earthly way to offer a truthful  explanation; not in a world where Emma doesn’t remember, and once more, Regina feels so very cheated.  This charade of a relationship, half of it incredibly real and the other half incredibly not, is a burden unlike any other that Emma could have made her carry.  In a world where they  _shared_  it, Regina would’ve never had to explain and Emma would’ve run interference, noble and sickeningly sincere as she is.  But now?    
  
“I don’t want the responsibility,” she then says, which at least isn’t a  _lie_.  
  
“Yet you’re fine with Henry--”  
  
“ _Henry_  has been raised in my image.  I wouldn’t know what to do with a child birthed from such--”  She sighs in exasperation and longs to shake Emma, to make her understand that this very conversation is  _exactly_  why she cannot raise a child stemming from that gene pool; not unless it’s heavily diluted and free from interference.  “They wouldn’t  _like_ how I would raise their child.  I know they view me as strict and demanding on Henry, _distant_ even, and they are-- _ugh_ \--”  
  
She stops talking when Emma looks at her in that cloying way that she does, sometimes, right before a kiss is initiated, but  _surely_  Emma isn’t that stupid.  Surely, she can still recognize a fuse for what it is.  
  
“If that’s  _really_  what you’re like, would I ever have trusted you with my kid?”  
  
 _You had no choice,_ Regina wants to say.  It had been true in the other world; no choice, no say in the matter. More of Rumpelstiltskin’s careful tipping of destiny, until Henry tied them together as he continues to do now.    
  
It’s yet one more truthful statement that will miss the mark here completely, and the closest she can come is saying, “You were young and panicking.  I was--a solution.”  
  
“Do you really think you’re  _that_  horrible?  That there’s nothing--I don’t know,  _good_  about you as a person or a parent?” Emma asks her, with one of those pitying little frowns; the kind that says,  _oh, Regina, why are you being so silly?_   It’s another expression of marriage that she’d just as soon never see again.  
  
The questions, however, leave her with a singular opportunity to be honest in this discussion, and after a second she looks at her wife imploringly.  “Emma--if you …  _truly_  love me, then just trust me when I say that I am  _not_ cut out for this … privilege.  If you want to be the baby’s godmother, then by all means, but doing this...”  
  
“It will make you miserable,” Emma says, studying her carefully.  
  
And there it is: the trigger.  Regina feels herself uncoil almost instantly, and then carefully says, “It will make me  _incredibly_  unhappy.”  
  
“Fine.  Then you’re not doing it,” Emma says, firmly and without any room for doubt.  “You were still a complete ass to Mary Margaret just now and I’m still more than a little pissed off; and we  _will_ finish this conversation.  I just have to go and--”  
  
“Put out some fires,” Regina says, evenly.  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”  
  
For the first time in a long while, Regina finds that when she wryly smiles at Emma, it’s actually fully genuine and with some latent fondness.  “No, dear.  It’s just--it’s very  _you_.”  
  
Emma looks at her in a squirrelly, confounded manner, but then just shakes her head and heads for the front door, closing it behind her with a little bit of force but not quite the slam that Regina had been gunning for.  Of course, in true  _happy endings,_ doors do not get slammed.  Spouses do not fight, and relationships do not sour.  
  
Regina looks at the ruined carpet behind her, and sighs.    
  
There is no point in destroying a home she might not be able to escape, and so she heads to the kitchen for the dustpan, only to find Henry standing there.  
  
Her son is looking at her with the most grief-stricken look on his face, knitting his sweater together in his hands nervously.  It’s a gesture she’s seen on him before; report cards that disappointed because he’d been too preoccupied with railing against her presence in his life to do his homework--too  _busy_  sneaking around with Operation Whathaveyou to bother with anything happening in his actual life.    
  
It’s  _not_ a gesture she’s seen on him in this world, though, and she knows that she looks as stricken as he does, before she can mask her concern.  
  
“Henry,” she says, unsure of what else to say.  
  
“You were fighting,” he adds, in a very small voice.  
  
“Yes,” she says, carefully.  “We were.”  
  
“You never fight.”  
  
“Dear,  _all_  adults fight sometimes--”  
  
“Not you,” he says, with the same kind of square jaw his other mother had shown a few minutes prior.   _It’s decided_ , that looks screams.  She can’t rebut it no matter how much she might want to.  “You never fight and Ma says it’s because when a relationship is good, you can work out your differences with a normal discussion.  Shouting is what happens when things aren’t good.”  
  
Regina exhales slowly through her nose and then reaches for a kitchen chair, slowly lowering herself onto it and thinking, thinking  _fast_.    
  
This is the problem with granting wishes to someone with extensive first-hand experience of terrible relationships and dysfunctional families: Emma’s concept of  _good_  is utterly unrealistic.  Perhaps it’s even modelled on the fairy tale story that Emma’s real parents had lived out, but even  _they_  would be the first to admit that it hadn’t ever been  _easy_.  Regina had seen to that personally, in part, and where she hadn’t, King George made up for the shortfall.  
  
“She’s not wrong,” Regina finally says, before pushing back a second chair and motioning for Henry to sit down on it.  When he does, his legs start to jiggle.  It was the sight of that that made her send him to therapy in the first instance; too many dinners with his legs kicking against the table legs without cessation.  Too many dinners of him staring at his plate and flatly declaring himself not hungry.  One too many instances of  _you’re not even my real mother_.    
  
“So things aren’t good,” he says, staring at his socks and at her boots.  “Things are bad, with you and Ma.”  
  
“Things were... a little bad today,” she says, after a few moments.  “We disagreed on something, and there wasn’t an easy solution to the problem.  Sometimes, there are situations when compromise isn’t possible and if _both_  people in a discussion believe that they are right, it happens that--”  
  
He sighs at her, as if she’s missing something very obvious, and she stops talking.  Instead, she just looks at his face for a few moments until he looks back at her.  There’s a look in his eyes that she hoped to never see again.  It’s one of  _fear_.  Perhaps it’s not directly aimed at her, so much as at the situation, but it still makes her have to fight hard against a flinch.  
  
“Henry, no matter what your mother has said--people aren’t  _perfect,_ and neither are relationships.  You know we don’t expect you to be perfect, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, easily, which means that Emma was at least cogent enough to not place the kind of absurd pressure on  _him_  that she’s placed on their relationship.  
  
“Okay.  The truth is--we don’t expect each other to be perfect, either.  But two people who aren’t perfect sometimes clash, no matter how hard they’re trying.”  
  
“Who wasn’t perfect today?” he asks, squinting at her.  
  
“Well, dear, I’d say we both weren’t--but that doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that we both  _try_  to be the very best we can be.  Trying means that... sometimes there  _can_  be shouting, but we both make a genuine effort not to let it happen.”  
  
He mulls on that for a moment and then says, “I didn’t like it.”  
  
“No, I can’t imagine that you did,” Regina agrees, and watches as he reaches for her hand, fingers just about covering her own.  It’s what propels her to add, “Neither did I, Henry.”  
  
“Do you think that... if we make a nice dinner together, you can maybe have a discussion later that isn’t just about shouting at each other?” he then asks, peering up at her in a way that suggests that no matter how she’s tried to mitigate his upset, his levels of hope have taken a blow today.  A blow of the  _Santa isn’t real_ variety, in the shape of  _my parents aren’t perfect_.  
  
It’s probably a good thing, to bring him down to earth a little, but it doesn’t make it any less regrettable to see these signs of him growing up and out of unconditional  _trust_  all over again.  
  
After a moment, she nods.  “I think that a nice dinner will definitely help.”  
  
“Okay,” Henry says, and then adds, “Pancakes for dinner.  Ma loves pancakes for dinner.”  
  
“I know,” Regina says, because he needs to hear it, and because for better or for worse, she  _does_  know.  
  
…  
  
Happy endings cannot halfway exist; they either are or they are not, and she can either shatter all of them or none of them.  
  
An unhappy ending with Emma would result in an unhappy ending for Henry, and everything they have sacrificed--her  _own mother’s life_ \--would become meaningless.  That, in and of itself, is unacceptable, and when over dinner, Regina considers all the possible prices she could’ve paid for the curse she herself once cast, she can’t deny that this existence is  _so_ merciful.  
  
She gets to witness Henry’s happy ending.  
  
She would’ve never granted Emma the same privilege in kind, and it’s that thought that niggles, as Emma acts as if everything is fine and Henry slowly starts to behave like himself again; like the boy he was always supposed to be, and like the boy he  _can_ be in a reality where he’s surrounded by love.  
  
 _With her comes the boy,_ Rumpelstiltskin had said, and as always, he’d understood the rules of the game long before she’d even realized that she was playing.  
  
…  
  
After dinner, she brings a glass of wine into the study--Emma’s domain now, more than her own--and puts it down in front of her wife with a renewed sense of determination.  
  
Emma looks at her, a little warily, and then says, “You really left-fielded me today.  I didn’t like it.”  
  
“I need you to understand something,” Regina says, after a few seconds, before heading towards the window and gazing at an apple tree that seems healthy; refreshed, even.  All without her influence.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I am  _not_ infallible.”  
  
A scoff sounds behind her, and Emma says, “Regina--I’ve been with you long enough to know that you fuck up from time to time--”  
  
“I know you know I’m  _difficult_.  It’s not the same thing.  You have--convinced yourself that I am capable of being the perfect spouse and the perfect mother, and Emma, I’m  _not_.”  She takes a sip of wine and then adds, “And neither are you.”  
  
Emma stays quiet for a few moments but then slowly walks over, appearing only in the periphery of Regina’s vision, until she leans against the window properly and compels Regina to look over.  
  
“My parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect,” she then says, because those, at least, are memories she can influence.  “ _They_  fought.  They disagreed on just about anything to do with how I should be raised.  My mother  _hated_ Daniel--”  
  
“No, she didn’t,” Emma counters, automatically.  
  
Regina smiles as she looks at the tree, but it’s leaden, this undeniable truth.  “Yes, she did, dear.  She hated him, and she would’ve hated you, too.”  
  
“But I’m--I went to college.  I’m the  _mayor_  now,” Emma says, sounding flabbergasted.  “I’m a good stable provider and--”  
  
“Yes,” Regina agrees, ignoring the stab of sympathy she feels for a version of Emma Swan who thought herself lacking on all of these fronts.  “But you’re also a woman, and she wouldn’t have liked that for me, I don’t think.”  
  
Emma stays quiet, but her face slowly falls, as if she’s waking up to the idea that she cannot possibly be everything that everyone in this town wants or needs.  That, in a world where she isn’t blessed with the mantle of _savior,_ there will always be disapproval aimed at her.  
  
It’s twice in one day Regina has lifted the veil, and to her own surprise, it’s no less off-putting this time than it was with Henry.  She puts her glass of wine down on the window sill and then, after a second, reaches for Emma’s hand.  
  
“My point is that that doesn’t matter.  What matters is...”  
  
“Is this just--a long lead-up to you telling me that you don’t want to be with me anymore?” Emma asks.  
  
The question is shocking enough that Regina looks over, sharply, and then says, “How would you get that from--”  
  
“I’m not...  _blind_ , Regina.  I’ve noticed that things haven’t been the same lately.  I’ve tried to get you to talk to me about it, but you seem to just want to disappear to the stables and... I don’t know.  I’m not--”  Emma hesitates, and then sighs, sagging against the window more fully.  “Words just aren’t my thing.  You know that Mary Margaret writes my speeches for me when you don’t.”  
  
“You won’t be running for re-election, will you,” Regina says, after a few seconds.  
  
Emma sort of half-laughs after a moment and then shakes her head.  “You know me too well.  There’s parts of the job I like, but all the … schmoozing and debating...”  
  
“It takes a certain kind of person.”  
  
“And what about a successful marriage?  What kind of person does that take?”  
  
Regina holds her breath for a few moments and thinks of Henry; then thinks of the escape clause built into their relationship, whereby she just has to say she isn’t  _happy_  and it seems that Emma can no longer hold on to her.  It’s more of an out than she herself offered anyone, back when she’d held all the strings, and it says everything there is to say about the differences between them as people.  
  
“A person who tries,” she says, on the exhale, and it’s just soft enough for Emma to hear it.  
  
Emma stays quiet for a few seconds, but then grips her hand more tightly.  “It’s been almost unreal.  How easy the last few years with you have been.  And I guess it’s normal for--you know, for things to not be like that all the time, but... I want you to know something, too, okay?”  
  
Regina nods, reaching for the wine again and taking another small sip.  
  
Emma takes a shuddering breath and then says, “No matter what else--what else we’ve  _become_  since I had Henry, what I’ve always admired about us is that we make a really good team when it comes to him.  I’m not cut out to be a disciplinarian, but sometimes he  _needs_  one.  And I guess a lot of the time, at least early on, I just felt like you were more of a parent than I could ever be because I just did the fun stuff.  That’s more like... an older sibling type role, it’s not really--”  
  
“Emma,” Regina says, almost gently, staring at her apple tree, lit up by moonlight and the Christmas lights on the neighboring property.  
  
“No, just let me say this,” Emma protests, squeezing her fingers again.  “Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I do think you’re infallible, but it’s because you were born to be a mother.  And I just don’t know if I am, but I think that together we’ve sort of nailed it.  I... no matter what else happens to us, no matter what’s going on with  _you_ , I don’t want us to lose sight of that.”  
  
“A team, for Henry,” Regina repeats, and then glances at where their hands are locked.  It’s the ringless hands; the ones that feel like their own.  Emma’s hand is one she’s grabbed hold of more than once; a hand that’s saved her life once or twice, even, and a hand that’s shielded her at times when most everyone would’ve hung her out to dry.  It’s a hand she’s resented and a hand she’s batted away, a hand that’s choked her and a hand that’s clawed at her, but more than anything, it’s a hand that’s held Henry’s at times when she  _couldn’t_.    
  
Perhaps that’s all that really matters.  
  
She takes a second, and then shifts her fingers until she’d holding on properly, and then rubs at her throat before saying, “If you weren’t in his life, dear, he would be a very lonely boy with very few friends.  He would be isolated, withdrawn and miserable.”  
  
“You don’t  _know_  that,” Emma says, sounding disturbed.  “How can you possibly know that?”  
  
Regina runs a hand through her hair and then looks directly at the woman that would’ve stolen her son, once, if it had come down to it, and says, “You offer him many things that I simply  _can’t_ , but that he nonetheless needs.  You bring him... happiness, in a way that--”  
  
“Oh, my God, shut up,” Emma says, pulling on her hand until they’re sort of leaning into each other.  “That’s--he wouldn’t be happy without  _either_  of us, Regina.  Jesus.”  
  
“You’re quite right,” Regina says, and stares back at the apple tree as Emma’s arm winds around her waist.  “He really wouldn’t be.”  
  
They’re quiet for a few seconds, as she tries not to react to Emma’s nearness and the way that Emma’s hair is tickling the side of her face, and then Emma says, “Please just tell me what’s going on with you, so I can figure out how to  _fix it_ ”, and just like that, the illusion that there is something truly  _different_  about this Emma from the Emma that they left behind is mostly gone.  
  
Regina takes a deep breath, and then says, “I’ve been seeing Dr. Hopper.”  
  
“Do you--can I ask what about?” Emma asks, without stiffening; without any sort of judgment at all, it seems.  
  
It’s incredibly painful, to realize that she’s simply surrounded by people who will never fail to make her look bad simply by existing, but in this one moment it’s also enough for her to offer a version of truth that exists in every single one of her lives.  
  
“My … husband has been dead for a very long time, now, and... I have never known how to let go of him, but I have to.  I just don’t think I can do it alone,” she says, more to Emma’s shirt than to Emma; more to herself and to his tree than to anyone else in the room.  
  
Emma says nothing at all for long moments, and then presses her lips to the top of Regina’s head and murmurs, “You  _aren’t_  alone.  Okay?”  
  
It’s not okay, but for the first time, Regina lets herself consider that one day it  _might_  be.  
  
…  
  
Memories she has of years past suggest that Thanksgiving is a spectacle in their house; a re-enactment of the family-filled childhood that Emma lacked on all the big holidays, and Regina herself also never fully experienced.  Not that Thanksgiving had  _existed_  back in the other realm, but any functions she’d thrown there had been forced.  People had attended out of fear and obligation, but no more than that.  
  
This is a different game.  Ruby, who is a chef in this world, comes over early on the morning of the day with a list of groceries needed that gets handed off to Emma, and a list of functions that get split between Regina and her grandmother.  Killian makes himself scarce for most of the morning, but shows up later with Kathryn and Frederick, who are then followed by Mary Margaret and David, and so it is that they end up eating with a few non-matching kitchen chairs filling out the dining area.  
  
She’s looking up a few bookmarked recipes on Epicurious when Emma raps her knuckles against the doorframe and says, “Hey--I’ve been thinking.”  
  
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Regina sighs, before she can censor herself, but Emma just snorts and then prods her in the shoulder, before muttering, “Bitch.”  
  
She’s starting to get too used to this world by far when the whole exchange just makes the corner of her mouth turn up, but it’s difficult to remember why she used to loathe Emma so much; without the fear of losing Henry, nothing about their interaction can really stay the same.  A partnership, is what Emma had called it.  It fits what they had created in the run-up to the spell being cast, and it’s what persists now that they’re stuck with the aftermath.  
  
Emma perches on the arm of the couch and tugs her hair up into a quick ponytail, and then says, “I’m not sure how much of what you were yelling about was the truth, the other day, but I thought about what you said about everything always going my way and--we don’t have to do Thanksgiving this year, okay?”  
  
Regina closes her laptop and looks up with a small frown.  “Of course we do; it’s a tradition--”  
  
“No, I mean--we don’t have to invite the whole goddamned town over, if you don’t want to.  I was thinking about--what you used to do when it was you and Daniel, and you guys just celebrated it together, right?  So--”  Emma rubs at the side of her head for a few seconds, and then says, “If you’d like it better, we can just do it you and me and Henry.  I’ll help cook, and--”  
  
The next time Regina blinks, it’s almost as if she’s seeing the woman next to her for the first time.  The sleeves of her blazer are tugged up, and she’s wandering around the house on bare feet in a pair of slacks that would’ve cost several hundred dollars, as if she’s a child playing dress-up--but all of the playacting is for a purpose, and the purpose is that Emma has made herself  _serious_ enough for a life with this particular family.    
  
Even this offering of a quiet Thanksgiving, just the three of them, is a  _serious_ attempt at compromise--but underneath all of this hard work remains a different version of Emma, and Regina looks at the bare feet and too-long pants and wrinkled shirt and messy ponytail and realizes that she’s not alone in playing a role, here.  
  
“And what would our friends do?” she asks, when Emma’s leg starts to bounce a little, as if she’s utterly unsure of how this attempt to generate more happiness will be received.  
  
“Well,” she then says.  “I figure they’ll all cook at home.  Except for Killian, I guess, though maybe this’ll persuade him to give up his bachelor ways and buy some adult furniture or something.”  
  
Regina scoffs softly.  “I wouldn’t bet on it.”  
  
“So do you want to--just the three of us?” Emma asks, now tugging on the hem of her jacket in an even antsier way.  “Is that what you need?”  
  
Regina takes a deep breath and considers what she  _needs_ , but the only thing she really  _needs_  is upstairs right now, sleeping and looking forward to one of very few days of the year when his house bustles with people.  
  
“No,” she then says, before putting the laptop down next to her and reaching for Emma’s knee after a second’s of hesitation.  “Henry loves Thanksgiving, which is all I care about. But--”  
  
“But what?” Emma asks, ducking her head a little.    
  
“I  _do_  have one request, this year,” Regina then says, and after a second just pats Emma’s leg.  “You won’t mind it overly much.”  
  
…  
  
Mary Margaret’s wounded expression when she opens the door is enough for Regina to direct a sharp look at David, who clears his throat, glares back at her, but then bends down to kiss her on the cheek anyway.  “Happy Thanksgiving, Regina.”  
  
“And to you,” she says, stepping aside to let him in, before heading out onto the steps and closing the door halfway behind her.  
  
Mary Margaret wraps her arms tightly around herself, bangs just peeking out from under a silly little cap, and then says, “If you didn’t want to--”  
  
“You surprised me.  That’s all.”  
  
She can see hints of Snow in the way that Mary Margaret doesn’t immediately take that at face value, and has to force herself to think of her son in there, waiting for  _his_  godmother to join the fun inside.  Godmother or grandmother, it hardly matters; Mary Margaret is in his life and has been since the day he was born.  It isn’t for  _her_  to sever that connection, or she’d be no better than Snow and Charming had been in those weeks before they cast the spell.  
  
“You  _laughed_  at me when I asked you to be the baby’s godmother, Regina.  It--it  _really_  hurt.”  
  
Regina nods and fights the urge to sigh.  “I laughed because I wasn’t expecting you to ask, and because I’m aware of the fact that you think I’m--somewhat standoffish, when it comes to my relationship with my son.  I didn’t think you’d rate me as a parent.”  
  
It’s not a sentiment that’s been made explicit in this realm at all, but it’s carried over from the previous one all the same; she can tell by the hint of shame in Mary Margaret’s eyes.  
  
“You’re not a very affectionate mother, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a good one,” Mary Margaret then mumbles.  
  
There’s an odd comfort in this stand-off, with both of them being  _wrong_  somehow.  It’s the most balance she and Snow have had in decades, and after a second Regina just sighs.  “Emma will make a fantastic godmother, and so will Ruby Lucas.   _If_  something were to happen to you and David, of course we will ensure that nothing bad will befall--”  She gestures at Mary Margaret’s waist, where her arms are slowly starting to unfurl.  
  
“Him,” Mary Margaret says, before smiling in a way that seems a little sad.  Another illusion of perfection shattered, Regina thinks, and so it gets easier to breathe once more.  “You’re the first to know;  _David_  doesn’t even know, but it’s a boy.  It’s what he’s been hoping for, so I want it to be a surprise--”  
  
Regina takes a deep breath, and then repeats, “ _Nothing_  bad will befall him.  You have my word.”  
  
“Okay,” Mary Margaret says, because it’s always that easy with those that are  _good_.  She just gestures towards the door and says, “Shall we?” and Regina follows her in, ignoring the, “I like the suit, by the way--” and subsequent mindless chatter that follows, and instead glancing into the living room.  
  
Emma is talking to Henry about some call made in some football game that never would’ve been on her television in  _her_  version of Storybrooke, but that seems to fit this version of the town she once imagined just fine.  As Mary Margaret strips off her coat and hands it over, Emma looks up and then gets to her feet, heading over with a near-empty beer bottle dangling from one hand.  
  
“Hey, you,” she says to Mary Margaret, with a quick hug, before letting Mary Margaret duck under her arm and head into the living room; and then they’re in the hallway alone, close enough to everyone else present to not truly  _feel_  alone, but there’s something very private about the way that Emma stands next to her all the same.  
  
There’s something challenging about the way Emma looks at her, and after a second, Regina arches an eyebrow.  “Comfortable?”  
  
“I have no idea why I don’t dress like this all the time,” Emma says, actually sounding very confused in a way that reminds Regina of Henry; and it’s in that unintentional resemblance that Regina feels herself actually  _relax_ around her wife for the first time in a month.  “Or why I’ve never put you in  _that_ before because, damn, Regina...”  
  
Whatever attraction Emma has for her in this world, it’s always felt contrived, but now that she actually looks like  _herself,_ Regina finds it a little more difficult to automatically dismiss the sentiment as being nonsense.  Instead, she just shrugs, tugging on the sleeves of her blazer and then fixing her collar, all in habit.  “It’s not hard to wear a suit well.”  
  
“Hmm,” Emma says, which could mean just about anything, before twisting out her knee a little and looking at her new boots and skinny jeans.  “Not sure I can wear this to work, but--”  
  
“You look good,” Regina cuts her off, trying the words out in her mind first and voicing them when she realizes she actually  _means_  them, if only because the familiarity of Emma in jeans and a soft v-neck sweater, with all those curls tumbling down over her shoulders, is very welcome after a month of feeling adrift in a sea of strangers.  
  
“Thanks,  _babe,_ ” Emma says, barely hiding a grin as she says it, and not hiding it at all when Regina just rolls her eyes and reaches for the empty bottle, carrying it back to the kitchen with her.  
  
In the living room, some sort of goal is scored--she has no idea--and the men all applaud, except for Henry, who has opted to root for the underdog; and it’s when he groans, “oh,  _come on_ ” that she realizes she’s just shared a genuine moment with the woman who,  _for better or for worse_ , is her partner in this happily-ever-after.

It’s not much, but it’s more than she ever had with Leopold, and perhaps that will prove to be enough.


	5. Chapter 5

_a middle_

_…_

_The second trimester of pregnancy often brings a renewed sense of well-being.  
_ The Mayo Clinic

…

_I notice you are stark naked.  
_ _How about this suit -_

_Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.  
_ _Will you marry it?_  
Sylvia Plath, “The Applicant”

…

_Hey Alice, into the pavement_  
 _I’m caving in_  
Matthew Good Band, “Failing the Rorschach Test”

_…_

_I am all the days that you choose to ignore  
_ Radiohead, “All I Need”


	6. Chapter 6

_Four_  
  
…  
  
The passage of time in Storybrooke has always felt delayed.  
  
It wasn’t per se that nobody other than Henry was aware of the fact that nothing was moving forward.  The town simply runs at a very sedate, calm pace; it emanates a kind of peace that the kingdoms of old would have never seen, as it simply wasn’t possible to ever go about life in such a relaxed manner when ogres, trolls, goblins and all sorts of uncontrolled magic users roamed the lands freely.  
  
Whatever Emma has changed, it hasn’t been the way that one season seems to just dip and flow into the next, like two practiced ballroom dancers skating along a polished floor.  
  
They go to bed one night in the fall, and wake up the next day in the winter. Henry puts on a thicker scarf and a jacket with a hood and barrels into the yard to start piling snow together, and Emma shuffles out after him in a pair of heavy boots and a ridiculous faux-fur hat with earflaps.  Regina watches from the bedroom window as they pelt snow at each other, a mug of coffee warming her hands.  
  
Without warning, they declare a ceasefire and then both peer at her, waiting for a sign of grudging disapproval, but all Regina feels the need to do is press her forehead against the window and wonder of how, after so many years, it will feel to wake up a few winters from now to a son who doesn’t care to chase his mother around the yard for a snowball fight anymore.    
  
Emma might then join her by the window, in her gauche fuzzy bunny slippers and that canary-yellow robe, and comment on the state of the apple tree; perhaps that’s the slow-moving, subtle end destination of this relationship she’s trying to come to terms with.  Alternatively, Emma might try to drag _her_ outside for a replacement fight, muttering about how she used to be funonce and other similar hallucinatory statements that may very well be true for this world.  
  
Henry blinks up at her one last time and then heads over to Emma, inaudibly talking until Emma’s phone is handed over; a few seconds later, Regina’s own phone vibrates on her nightstand, and she heads back for it and wonders if, much like she has to the subtly changing seasons in Storybrooke, she will one day get used to her son’s obvious love for her.  
  
For now, a day at a time of it is almost more than she can handle, and so she focuses on this particular one; she digs a pair of Hunter boots out of the closet and puts on one of the pairs of jeans she’s kept for job purposes, and heads downstairs, pulling on a thick puffy jacket that Emma got her a few years back as a Christmas present in light of the many Saturday mornings they spend out on a soccer field together.  
  
“We’re going to make him look like Wolverine,” Henry calls out over his shoulder, and Emma makes a variety of hand gestures--horns, she thinks, and there’s something about … gloves, perhaps--to indicate what crafts genius their son expects of them.  
  
“I figure since you’re going to be in charge of designing a building soon, you might as well get some practice in with designing one of the X-Men,” Emma says, her breath visible and slowly coasting towards Regina, who takes one more sip of her coffee and then hands it over--it’s more to have her hands free than anything else, but it still feels startlingly organic, as if having Emma around so often is habit-forming in and of itself.  
  
“Yes; I can see how one would prepare me for the other,” she says, dryly, before crouching down by where Henry is packing snow together for the base.  
  
Briefly, she feels some minor annoyance at the spell and how much manual labor this little project will take; it would be so much easier to just use a touch of magic and send the snow swirling around them, packing itself together without a single design flaw or structural weakness.  
  
He’d love that, too--the power and beauty implicit in what she could do with magic.  She could craft him a whole yard full of X-Men, which is something that Emma could definitely _not_ do for him, and--  
  
She stops thinking when he turns to look at her, his cheeks dimpling faintly in the way that Emma’s also do when she’s particularly pleased about something. “I’m going to work on the claws, can you make his head, Mom?”  
  
It clears her mind, and after a second she just smiles back.  “I’ll do my best, dear.”  
  
“Okay,” he says, already distracted by the lines he’s drawing in the snow, concentration etched on his face and his teeth digging into his lip.  
  
It takes them two hours to get something lumpy and not at all superheroic or human-shaped up in the backyard, but Henry just laughs and leans into Emma’s side and says, “That was fun.  Can we tear him down now?”  
  
If there is any magic left in this world, it’s in her son’s eyes, Regina thinks, before jolting unexpectedly when her supposedly adult wife knocks their ten year old back into the snow, sending a flurry of white dust and a peal of unrestrained laughter into the sky.  
  
…  
  
Christmas is easily the most important holiday in their family life; more so than their wedding anniversary, which is somewhere in the summer--she thinks, anyway--and more so than any birthday, because Henry prefers the traditions they’ve created for the winter months to the presents he gets in the spring.    
  
It’s a season of hot chocolate and fires lit in the living room and watching idiotic movies in which puppets sing songs, and as much as she herself always tried to adhere to all of the ritual that came with Christmas in this world, it becomes clear to her now that she’s never really hit the mark.  The key to the season is a difficult-to-describe emotional element that Emma--native to this land much more than any other--has picked up on, and so this is _her_ holiday, not Regina’s.  
  
As disorganized as Emma is with regards to approximately everything else in their life that Regina doesn’t remind her to put on the fridge calendar, she’s militaristic about the approach to Christmas to the point where they complete most of their decorating by the first week of December and have a deadline for their wish lists that falls on the second Saturday.  
  
“We might need to go to several stores, and even if we just order stuff we have to build in enough time for it to get delivered; there’s nothing worse than expecting something on Christmas Eve and not getting it until the 27th,” Emma says, peering intently at her laptop, the end of a pen shoved sideways into her mouth.  
  
Regina considers past celebrations in Emma’s life, and how badly they must’ve been lacking given how dedicated she is to celebrating Christmas now.  Henry has picked up on how important the tree and the presents underneath are to his mother, and treats the occasion with far more reverence than a children’s holiday deserves; he, too, is very serious about the wish list, dropping an envelope with his increasingly less childish print off in Emma’s mail organizer and then saying, “I think you guys need to make two lists, one with stuff I can buy and one with stuff I can’t buy, like knives or really big things like a new horse.”  
  
The temptation to squeeze him in close and smother him, to cling to these last remnants of his boyhood, is getting harder to dismiss--but Henry’s love is a constant in this world, and it makes her so much less desperate to have it.  The sheer number of presents she’d bought for him the previous year had been ridiculous, she now realizes; ridiculous, and all of them had failed to hit the mark, because all he’d really wanted over the holidays was to spend some time with Emma.  
  
She gave him that, too--and watched as the presents she’d bought him gathered dust in his bedroom, while the card Emma had given him was displayed proudly on top of his nightstand.  
  
Now that she has time to genuinely assess her relationship to Henry--now that she doesn’t have to constantly fight to keep him--it’s easy to see what she’s done _wrong_ in the past.  It’s not as easy to think of ways to fix those wrongs, however, because as much as she loves her son, the things that move him are as alien to her as they ever have been.  
  
The difference between this year and the last is that she is no longer alone in needing to figure out what it is that her son wants, and on a late Tuesday evening, she turns to Emma and says, “What on earth is the difference between the X-Men and the Avengers?”  
  
Emma glances up from the laptop screen and takes the everpresent pen out of her mouth and then says, “You mean other than that they’re different teams with different members?”  
  
Regina clamps down on any latent annoyance at that obnoxious response; just faintly raises her eyebrows until Emma smiles at her.  
  
“Sorry.  What do you want to know?”  
  
Once, she read an X-Men comic, in a desperate attempt to understand what her son was doingthat made him so unwilling to be mothered by her, but it had made no sense to her at all.  “Perhaps just explain to me why any of this is interesting, and why Henry prefers one over the other.”  
  
“Well, everyone's into the Avengers right now. They're a bunch of really hot people kicking ass, Regina--what’s not to love?”  
  
She does roll her eyes at that.  “I’m fairly sure our ten year old isn’t in it for the _hot people,_ dear.”  
  
Emma grins.  “You’re too easy sometimes.”  
  
“Fine--if you don’t want to help--” Regina starts to say, mentally reciting any number of hexes she could place on Emma right now, if only.  Dr. Hopper has encouraged her to try to channel frustration positively, and sometimes, she actually almost _manages_ it.  
  
“Hey, of course I do,” Emma says, tilting her head slightly.  “What do you say we get Mary Margaret and David to watch the kid this Friday and we get you educated?  I’ll get a copy of The Avengers and we can talk about what a ten year old might like about _aliens invading the earth_ and a bunch of superheroes saving it.”  
  
“ _Thank you_ ,” Regina says, sarcastically enough for Emma to laugh a little again; the fact that she nonetheless feels a little more relaxed about the notion of buying her son something memorable and meaningful is beside the point.  
  
…  
  
It may never not smart to see Henry depart with James, but in this world he turns to look over his shoulder--yellow backpack stuffed to the brim with board games and a change of clothes--and waves at her before disappearing into the truck, and when she closes the front door behind her it’s without the usual remnants of devastation that accompany seeing her son with a Charming.  
  
Perhaps it’s just that he’s always with a Charming, now, but that Charming...  
  
Well, she supposes it makes sense that after two months and a complete severing of the familial ties, she thinks of Emma as hers, even if it lacks the meaning that that sentiment would normally carry.  
  
‘Her’ Charming is currently setting off some popcorn in the kitchen, out of the suit she wore to the office and into a pair of nearly painted-on jeans and a t-shirt, softly singing a few bars of _I Put a Spell On You_ \--yet another thing she would’ve never pinned on the sheriff before all of this life-sharing commenced, but Emma likes the standards and only occasionally breaks out some guitar-driven noise that Regina finds herself scowling at.  
  
The microwave timer beeps, and a few seconds later Emma shows up with two wine glasses precariously held by the stems in one hand and a bowl of popcorn tucked under her arm.  “Ready?”  
  
“As I’ll ever be,” Regina says, and Emma rolls her eyes before heading to the living room in front of her.  
  
“It’s just a movie _,_ Regina; and besides, you’re the one who asked.”  
  
“Yes.  I didn’t realize you’d turn it into an _ordeal,_ dear.  I thought you’d just give me--I don’t know.  A guide,” she says, sitting down on the sofa as Emma deposits her bounty and then heads to the TV to pop the Blu-ray in.  
  
“Comics for dummies,” Emma says, peering over her shoulder briefly.  “You think that exists?”  
  
Regina shrugs, stretching out her legs and then glancing at the popcorn.  There’s enough butter on it to clog a few arteries, and if Emma doesn’t insist that she try some, she probably won’t; but the wine is a nice touch, and as she lifts the glass and gently inhales, she knows it’s been breathing for a while.  
  
That’s when it occurs to her that this is a _date_ , and she stares at Emma over the rim of the glass for a few seconds, as Emma curses about the various source extensions on the television and then whacks the remote against the unit a few times.  
  
“Break it and buy it, Miss Swan,” she says, forcing herself to keep breathing steadily; there is no reason for her to do anything else.    
  
Things between them have been fine, ever since Thanksgiving.  Emma has given her swaths of space without her even needing to ask for them, and she in kind has been trying to let a few irritating things--such as the cursing, or the drinking juice straight from the carton--go, and it’s been peaceful.  Even the parts of their relationship that have very little at all to do with Henry are getting easier to adjust to; she no longer balks at late night conversations about the town and their taxes, however surprised she’d been the first time Emma had raised filing together as of next year, and even the regular suggestions for intercourse that Emma clumsily puts forward...  
  
She smiles, despite herself, because the girl is about as subtle as a cat burglar with a club foot about it, but she’s not going to complain; being stared at for a few minutes until Emma finally says something asinine and incomplete like, “Hey, you wanna maybe--” is infinitely preferable to the alternative of having no warning short of hands all over her body.  
  
Yes, even the sex is manageable, not least of all because here, it isn't part of her duties as a spouse; she can decline without repercussions, as Emma seems hypersensitive to the fact that she's in therapy and has no intention of pushing her to do anything she's not 'ready' for.  
  
Emma Swan, _not_ pushing; miracles occur even in realms without magic, it seems.  
  
The FBI warning appears on the screen and Emma straightens again, wincing at the loud crack her knees produce, but then looks like she’s just slain a dragon all the same.  “Here we go.  Get ready to have your mind blown with special effects and witticism.”  
  
Regina bites her tongue to not say that she seriously doubts that this movie will show her anything that’s more impressive than the various things she’s done, and instead just takes a sip of wine and grunts when Emma ungracefully collapses onto the cushion next to her.  The bowl of popcorn is placed on Emma’s stomach a second later, and then Emma twists until she can drop her head into Regina’s lap and drape her feet over the edge of the couch.  
  
No; Casanova, her wife is not, Regina thinks, and drinks some more wine before grudgingly trying some of the sickeningly sweet popcorn that is swiftly disappearing into her wife’s seemingly bottomless pit of a stomach.  
  
…  
  
The movie is, of course, ridiculous, so after an hour of it--with no end seemingly in sight--Regina squints at the screen and says, “Which of these people is it that you’re so attracted to?”  
  
“Hm?” Emma asks, mouth full of popcorn; she looks like a gluttonous chipmunk, but then glances back at the screen and says, “All of ‘em.”  
  
It’s an unsatisfactory answer and Regina purses her lips.  “I’m quite partial to Thor, myself.”  
  
“Well, yeah--you like ‘em Nordic,” Emma says, before pointing at her own face and swallowing.  “Right?”  
  
The ability to make each other laugh, according to Dr. Hopper, is a sign of a healthy relationship, but he failed to stipulate that the timing of said laughter was perhaps crucial for the relationship’s ultimate wellbeing.  When Emma actually looks a little hurt, Regina forces herself to sober, with a grave, “Yes, dear.  It seems I do.”  
  
Emma’s quiet for a few seconds and then shifts onto her side and says, “Really?   _Thor?_ ”  
  
“Well, what on earth is wrong with Thor?”  
  
Emma makes a face and then says, “I don’t know; he’s so … big.  He’s just such a _man_.”  
  
This time, she laughs fully.  “There is no need to sound so threatened, dear; it’s not as if Daniel--”  
  
Emma turns to look at her, abruptly serious, and she feels the laughter snuff out.  Her expression is frozen for a few seconds, and then she stares back at the screen and says, “Be more specific than _all of them_.”  
  
“Agent Hill,” Emma says, with the kind of gentleness that makes Regina feel incredibly trapped, without warning.  “And I guess the Hulk.”  
  
“I thought you were meant to call him Bruce Banner when he’s not green,” Regina says, and then smirks faintly.  “Agent Hill?”  
  
“Yeah, she’s really hot--and like--I don’t know.  Women in charge.  It’s a thing,” Emma says, demonstrating all the verbal acuity of a ten year old.  
  
It’s hard not to wonder if that’s a legitimate sentiment or one that Emma’s invented for herself in this life; Regina absently fingers the top button on her blouse, stopping only when Emma flips onto her back again.  
  
“This movie is absurd,” she then says.  “I can think of at least sixteen different ways in which that Loki figure could have been stopped by now and only half of them involve nuclear weaponry.”  
  
It takes Emma a second, but then she starts laughing softly.  “This is probably the dumbest conversation we’ve ever had.”  
  
“That’s not something to be _proud_ of.”  On screen, that archer manages a fortieth or so long-distance kill shot, despite only having about seven arrows in his quiver.   _Magic_ , Emma had called that, with a small smile.  It’s infuriating how much _magic_ would _not_ account for anything that’s happened in the last hour and a half of this movie.  
  
“You don’t have to be proud of having fun,” Emma counters, and then finishes the last of the popcorn with a loud crunch.  “You just--have it.  Feels good, I swear; you should try it sometime.”  
  
Regina sighs deeply.  “Emma, this is getting me no closer to figuring out what Henry would like for Christmas, which is the only reason I agreed to watch this tripe in the first place.”  
  
Emma shifts a little and then says, “Advanced riding lessons would really make his year.”  
  
“He’s too young,” Regina says, immediately, but Emma simply reaches for her hand and squeezes it.  
  
“He’ll be with _you_.  He’s been riding pretty much since birth, Regina, you’re not going to let him get hurt--and anyway, can’t you just modify the curriculum so that he’s doing the safe stuff but he feels like he’s making progress?”  
  
“There’s no such thing as _half jumping_ an obstacle, Emma.”  
  
Emma shrugs after a few seconds.  “I’ve seen him ride.  I think he can do it.”  
  
“Well, God, if he can it’s definitely not genetics _,_ ” Regina says, a little more forcefully than she means to, but after a second Emma just half-smiles and says, “You don’t know that.  Maybe one of my parents is--well, you know.”  
  
The urge to say something snide here about James’ incessant fleeing from duty on horseback comes and goes quickly; there’s something about the look in Emma’s eyes that just stops her short.  
  
It hasn’t occurred to her until now that the consequence of Emma wishing that she didn’t have her own parents has meant that she’s never going to have answers about her origins at all; it would have been a nagging absence in her past life, much as it had been in Henry’s before he’d tracked Emma down, and it’s an absence that Emma has simply volunteered for once more.  
  
Regina feels an oddly nauseating sensation swirl around low in her stomach for a few seconds, and then just glances at the bowl of popcorn and says, “Next time, we’re having a cheese board; I don’t think that that is meant to be digested by humans.”  
  
“Oh, I didn’t put you off superhero movies altogether?” Emma asks, blinking a few times, and then Regina’s just faced with that absurd mixture of fondness and trust that is, apparently, another cornerstone of a successful union.  
  
“No, you have, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything _else_ we could watch,” she says, because the very least she can do now that Emma is fifty percent responsible for Henry’s cultural upbringing is ensure that the girl develops some taste.  
  
…  
  
The call comes at around five on a Wednesday; Killian is handling the late class and so she’s at home, preparing a Caesar salad and helping Henry with his math homework when it happens.  Half of her mind is on the only Christmas present she hasn’t purchased yet--her circle of friends had been easy, even if Killian is unlikely to thank her for the dining set she and Kathryn will force upon him--and the other half of it is on the present she is least sure about.  
  
It’s strange, being married to someone who cannot remember who they actually _are_ at all, and it’s not as if Regina would’ve declared herself an expert on Sheriff Swan in their previous lives, but she’d known a few things.  The woman enjoyed her alcohol--which hasn’t changed here--and terrible music--which has--and, of course, ugly-as-sin leather jackets.  
  
Wives dress their partners, or so television would suggest, and Emma had gone along with her earlier wardrobe changes just fine, so buying her a less trashy and much more expensive jacket to start wearing in the warmer months had felt like an obvious choice--but the longer it’s been wrapped under the tree, the more she’s wondered if it’s perhaps too …  
  
Intimate?  
  
She snorts at the thought before toweling her hands dry and heading for the phone; there isn’t any such thing as _too intimate_ for a woman she’s seen naked a few too many times by now, and so she just cannot figure out why buying the jacket has made her feel so off kilter.  
  
The number on the display, she recognizes immediately.  The Sheriff Department’s landline had called her more often than just about any other number in Storybrooke by the end of their stay in the other version of the town, but here, she frowns before answering.  This version of Emma isn’t the type to get arrested for any of the various things that Emma had been--or should have been--arrested for before, which means--  
  
She actually clutches at her necklace and then says, “ _What is it_?” in a tone of voice that produces nothing but silence on the other end of the line.  Then, a throat is softly cleared and Mulan says, “Mrs. Swan, is your wife there?  I tried her at her office but she didn’t pick up and I--well, there’s someone here looking for her.”  
  
Regina stares at herself in the mirror until any concern on her face is gone, and then says, “What do you mean, _someone_?”  
  
“He’s from out of town.  He says his name is Neal Cassidy and he knew Emma--”  
  
Mulan says a few more things, but she barely even registers them; just lowers the phone and watches as her face contorts in a way that she really, truly cannot control at all.  
  
“Mom?  Do you need me to help you with dinner?” Henry asks, from the kitchen, and she takes a deep breath and raises the phone to her ear again.  
  
“I’ll pass the message along to my wife; keep Mr. Cassidy there, please, and I’ll make sure she’ll be right there to see him.”  
  
She hangs up without waiting for a response and then straightens, cracking her neck once; twice--until she looks exactly the way she was always supposed to in Storybrooke, and then spins on her heels and heads back to the kitchen, where Henry’s chewing on the end of a pencil.  
  
“Henry, dear--I need to leave for a little while.  If you could set the table by six thirty, that would be great, and I’m sure that your mother will be home soon, okay?”  
  
She adds the kind of smile that she knows--from distant experience--will make him frown at her, because he can tell it’s not real, the same way that Emma can always tell when she’s forcing herself to go along with something, but that kind of smile is the best she can manage for now.  
  
It’s all she can do, really, to stop herself from wondering if the man she is about to meet is the mirror image of her son, and what it means that he has arrived in a town that he should have _never_ found on his own.  
  
…  
  
On the drive over, she has to resist the urge to batter a fist into the steering wheel.  
  
Hindsight is wonderful; wonderfully exposing, because _how_ has she never taken the opportunity to question Emma on Henry’s origins?  She just hadn’t wanted to know anything about the myriad of things that made Henry feel like he was not hers, and now she’s stuck with a wife who simply cannot tell her anything, who is functionally mute on the subject.    
  
In this world, Neal Cassidy is merely a traveling salesman who came and went in the dark of the night, leaving Henry as his only mark.  
  
Neal Cassidy, however, does not _know_ that.  Whatever brings him here--and she suspects it’s something far bigger than simply stopping by and catching up with a one-night stand of a decade ago--is something that Emma will have no recollection of, and thus no capacity to deal with.  
  
She doesn’t have any real choice but to try to keep this man away from her family, and she feels herself grimace at the awareness that her concern has very little to do with Henry, for now.  No, this is about their whole existence here, and how Neal Cassidy showing up has the potential to just upend the lies that bring them happiness.    
  
If anyone is going to make the decision to break this spell, it will damn well be her, and not a man who has no right to play any role at all in their lives.  
  
…  
  
She’s not sure what she’s expecting, but this responsible-looking adult in a black suit with a tie, hair slicked back, sitting at a desk that once was Emma’s and looking at a pocket watch--  
  
“Mrs. Swan,” Mulan says, from the doorway of the office.  “Is the mayor--”  
  
“She’s at home,” Regina says, with just enough of a hint of a smile for it to not sound like a brush-off.  “She asked me to entertain Mr. Cassidy for now.”  
  
Neal Cassidy turns to look at her over his shoulder and blinks a few times, as if there’s something familiar about her that he cannot place.  It’s disconcerting, but she steps forward to shake his hand and then forcefully says, “We’ve never met, of course, but Emma has told me all about you.”  
  
“She has?” Neal asks, freezing on the spot and then slowly getting to his feet, taking the hand he’s being offered.  His handshake is weak, flabby.  Regina abruptly savors the opportunity to dislike the man for more than his existence.  “Uh--”  
  
“My wife and I don’t keep any secrets from each other, dear,” she says; a mortal blow.  
  
Cassidy’s eyes dart up to hers quickly, and his hand falls away limply.  “Your … wife.”  
  
She smiles.  “You look like you could use a drink, Mr. Cassidy--so why don’t I get you out of the sheriff’s hair and we can wait for Emma to arrive together.”  
  
Neal bends down and reaches for a worn suitcase, still looking at her with a great amount of trepidation, and she relishes the moment for all it’s worth; it only lasts until she’s out the door of the department, because as soon as they are alone, a rush of icy anxiety befalls her once more.  
  
“Wow,” Neal Cassidy says, behind her.  “I--had no idea she went that way.  Ten years can do a lot to--”  
  
“ _Why_ are you here?” Regina asks, turning on her heels and staring at him.  He’s only slightly taller than she is, and cowers at the tone of her voice.  
  
“I’m here because--” Neal starts to say, and then just reaches into his coat pocket to produce a postcard.  “I heard she was here.”  
  
Regina reads it silently, feeling her blood turn to stone, and then peers up at him again.  “Who sent this to you?”  
  
“Lady--look, maybe you can just tell me where Emma is--”  Neal says, shifting uncomfortably.  “I wasn’t expecting her to be married but I’d like to make sure she’s okay anyway, you know?  I’ve waited a long time for … well.  All of this.”  
  
The conversation they’re having is not adding up for either of them, but it’s the best they’re going to be able to do with the information they have, and Regina hands the postcard back over before deciding to go with her instincts.  
  
“I have no intention of taking you to see Emma given what you did to her,” she says, coolly.  “You can deal with me, or you can--”  
  
“ _Neal?_ ” a voice she hears daily, a voice that’s starting to permeate her unconscious mind as well as her conscious one, and a voice that she’s never not wanted to hear _more_ , tentatively says from behind her.  A car door slams shut and Regina is forced to watch as Neal Cassidy, suit and tie and pocket watch and briefcase full of _God_ knows what, lights up with nothing short of hope and adoration at the sight of Emma, adult and in a matching suit, slowly walking towards them.  
  
“God,” he then says, before dropping the suitcase and walking over to her in two big steps, but then stopping again, hands twitching at his sides.  “Em, are you--”  
  
“What are you _doing_ here?” Emma asks, before shooting a look at Regina that is actually a plea for help, and Regina does the only thing she can think of doing:  
  
She moves to Emma’s side and reaches for her hand and hangs on to their partnership as tightly as she can.  
  
…  
  
“So--you’re really not mad at me for bailing on you?” Neal asks, for the fifth time.  Something about the way his upper lip twitches when he asks it reminds Regina of a rabbit, and there’s a nagging suspicion in her that she should knowwho he is.  
  
There had been a rabbit at her mother’s court, and she slams back the remains of her cider at the notion that Henry’s father is someone under her mother’s thumb.  Sometimes, it seems that there will never be any escaping of Cora’s influence--but then again, Cora is no more.  Even if Neal is that rabbit, and that rabbit is here under Cora’s instruction, it should not be hard for her to deal with him given that he has nobody left to follow.  
  
“No, of course not,” Emma says, running a hand through her hair and tucking a few strands of it behind her ear.  “I mean, I get it.  You had to move on, you know?  You had to do what you had to do.”  
  
Neal smiles at her, and after a few moments, Emma smiles back.  
  
Regina reaches for Emma’s knee, digs her nails into it, and then says, “Dear, can I talk to you for a moment?”  
  
“‘course,” Emma says, sliding off the stool and following her to the back of the room, where she asks, “What’s up?” in a way that makes Regina want to shake her.  
  
“What’s _up_ is that you’re having a pleasant drink with our son’s _father_ and--”  
  
Emma frowns a little and steps in closer.  “Yeah, well, what am I going to do--just dump that on him out of the blue?  He has no idea, Regina.  And I wanted to talk to you before making any decisions on that front, because maybe we need to brief Henry on it first--or maybe it’s just a bad idea if we don’t know what Neal’s doing now.  He’s being a little weird, don’t you think?  I’d kind of like to run a background check on him--”  
  
It’s probably just that Neal Cassidy is staring at them both with a probing expression, before reaching for his wallet and flipping through it and then glancing up at them again, but maybe it’s the fact that Emma is for once saying all the right things; either way, she suddenly finds herself appreciating the girl in a way that she never thought she would and reaches for her shoulders, with one last look at Neal Cassidy at the bar.  
  
The rest of Emma’s sentence is lost in a kiss that surprises the hell out of her; not merely because it’s the first real kiss that she’s initiated since she’s been kissing Emma Swan, but because with it comes a rush of _something_ \--the latent magic that lives inside of Emma, even here?  Her own power manifesting itself somehow?  The second her lips touch Emma’s, she feels as though the hair at the back of her neck stands upright, and it’s worrying, but she nonetheless pulls away only when Emma’s knees actually buckle and crash into her own.  
  
Emma stares at her, visibly dazed, and then wipes at her mouth.  “Uh--”  
  
“Thank you,” Regina says, feeling faintly dizzy herself.  “I think I needed to hear that.”  
  
“That was _not_ a thank you,” Emma says, swallowing visibly and then chuckling softly.  “But--uh, you’re welcome.  Happy to be responsible more often if that’s what it gets me.”  
  
At the bar, Neal Cassidy looks the most shocked he has all evening, and only just about manages another smile when Emma heads back over there and orders another drink for herself.  He’s clearly unsettled, and Regina wants to look pleased about that, but she can’t.    
  
It’s hard to _be_ pleased, given that she’s really not at all sure that she is winning, or what on earth the prize for a victory here would even be.  
  
…  
  
The rest of the evening is a blur of ‘catching up’, which has Neal’s eyes turning sharper with every additional fact that Emma reveals about her life--dodging any mention of Henry--and Regina feeling more and more like she has little choice but to find a way to make the man disappear.    
  
Neal doesn’t ever interject to tell Emma that her version of her life doesn’t add up, however; just sips at a beer and nods, smiling at all the appropriate times.  The one thing that seems legitimate is the comfortable way he leans into Emma, as if ten years haven’t passed and he still has any right to.  
  
It’s off-putting, and so at eight, Regina deliberately looks at her watch and reaches for Emma’s shoulder and says, “I’m afraid we have to leave, soon; Alice asked if we could be home by nine.”  
  
“Alice?” Neal asks, taking another sip and looking at Regina in a way that suggests that the gig, whatever he thinks it is, is up.  
  
Emma says nothing for a few seconds, and then produces her car keys and clenches her hand around them tightly.  “Our regular sitter,” she finally says.  
  
Neal’s fingers tighten around the glass, and Regina holds her breath as he carefully asks, “You have kids.  The two of you.”  
  
“Just the one,” Emma says, and then adds, “For now, anyway.”  
  
 _That’s_ news, and Regina makes a show of buttoning up her coat, mostly so that neither Emma nor Neal can read her shock off her face.    
  
Neal says nothing for a few moments, but then has the audacity to put a hand on Emma’s thigh.  “That’s--that’s really great, Em.  I always thought you’d be a great mother.”  
  
Regina contemplates driving a cocktail stick--olive and all--into his eye, but Emma just manages a mostly convincing smile.  “He’s a pretty great kid.  Makes it easy.”  
  
Neal nods at the car keys after a second.  “I guess--your son’s the reason you don’t drive the Bug anymore, huh.  It’s not really a family vehicle.”  
  
Emma’s eyebrows draw together, and then she slowly says, “Yeah, I guess.  I don’t know.  It was my first car; I just sort of sold it on when I could afford something _better_.  It was awful on mileage, but--it’s funny that you remember, that I had that car.  I haven’t thought about it for years.”  
  
Neal’s smile freezes on his face, and he looks directly at Regina.  “Years, huh.”  
  
“Dear, why don’t you go on ahead and get the car, and I’ll give Mr. Cassidy directions to the Bed and Breakfast.  I imagine that he won’t want to depart until the morning,” Regina says, sharply enough for Emma to look at her questioningly.  
  
This is history repeating itself; more so when Neal just raps his fingers against the bar and says, “Oh, I don’t know--I think I might stick around for a few days, get to know the town better.”  
  
“Oh, well--yeah.  If you do that, definitely talk to Regina; I might be the mayor, but she’s the one who actually has her ear to the ground when it comes to this place,” Emma says, getting to her feet and buttoning her blazer up again.  “It was--yeah, it was really good to see you again, Neal.  I’m glad you’re doing well.”  
  
Neal smiles, nose almost twitching, and then gets up to give her a hug.  Regina stares at him as he holds on a little too tightly, but then Emma pulls away and says, “See you soon” to Regina, which means the final word is hers.  
  
It’s going to have to do, for now, and they both fall silent as Emma heads out of the diner and past the front window, shaking her head a little, as if to say, _what a coincidence._  
  
“What the fuck is going on here?” Neal Cassidy asks, as soon as she’s gone from view.  
  
Regina gets to her feet, leaving twenty dollars for Granny, and then says, “Not here.  Follow me.”  
  
…  
  
“Look--I don’t know you from Adam, but I know that Emma came to this town because she had some mission to carry out--”  
  
Regina steps into Neal’s space until he backs up against the diner’s back wall, in that parking lot where they’d once found Kathryn, and says, “Tell me who sent you that postcard, and I might consider answering your questions.”  
  
Neal’s mannerisms are skittish, as if he’s looking for a way to fleece his way out of this situation, but then he sighs and says, “His name is August.  I don’t know--”  
  
Regina sighs, squeezing her lips together for a few seconds, and then says, “Well, Mr. Cassidy, here’s the first thing you need to know.  August Booth is dead.”  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
“He’s dead, and this isn’t the town that he directed you to.  Not anymore,” Regina says, before shoving her hands into her pockets.  
  
Neal says nothing for a few seconds, and then asks, “Who are you?  Really.”  
  
“I could ask you the same thing,” Regina says, tilting her head.  “Showing up here after all this time, acting like you had no other choice--”  
  
“I _didn’t_ ,” Neal says, and the way that regret mars his otherwise composed expression has Regina pause briefly.  “I did--look, goddammit, I don’t know about any of this _destiny_ crap, but I promised to get out of her way until it was done and August told me that it was, and now it’s like--she doesn’t even remember me.”  
  
Regina smiles, faintly.  “No, Mr. Cassidy.  It’s not _like_ she doesn’t remember you.  She actually _doesn’t_.”  
  
“How is that even possible--”  
  
“This destiny of hers... she carried it out, and the aftermath of her fulfilling it was disastrous enough for her to wish that she wouldn’t remember any part of her previous life.  She wished you out of existence, dear.  She reimagined your tryst to be a one-night stand.  Nothing important or memorable.”  
  
Neal’s pallor is sick, and Regina has to fight a sneer when the man’s eyes actually start to water.  “You’re lying.”  
  
Regina tilts her head.  “Am I?  Did the Emma you knew seem like she was destined to go to college, to settle down in a small town like this and be happy for it?  Do you trulythink that a girl with her record would ever be elected to public office?”  
  
The way Neal recoils from the mention of Emma’s brief stint in prison makes the penny drop, and she steps into his space even further, forcing him to look at her, before letting her mouth set.  
  
“It’s funny, isn’t it.   _Love_ is a word that you all throw around with such ease, but when it comes down to it, everyone who has ever claimed to love Emma has also found it exceptionally easy to abandon her in order to save themselves.  I can’t imagine she’d appreciate any sort of reminder of that, given the lengths she’s gone through to forget it.  Can you?”  
  
Neal swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and then slowly says, “I want a chance to make things right.  With her.”  
  
Regina smiles thinly.  “All you can do for her now, Mr. Cassidy, is let her live the life that she chose over you.  The right thing to do here is to _leave_ , before you start making her question what it is that keeps you hovering around her.”  
  
Her phone vibrates, and she steps away from Neal Cassidy, barely able to hide her contempt.    
  
“Don’t force my hand, Mr. Cassidy.  Don’t make me expose you for what you really are,” she says, before sliding her thumb across her phone and saying, “I’ll be right there, dear.  Two seconds.”  
  
“Regina,” Neal says, quietly enough for her to turn to look at him over his shoulder.  “Is she happy?”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, because it’s unquestionable, and watches as Neal sucks in a deep breath before nodding, seemingly to himself.  
  
“Okay,” he then says, and runs a hand across his face.  “I’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow.”  
  
Compared to Miss Swan herself, he doesn’t seem to be much of an opponent.  
  
…  
  
By seven am the next day, she realizes she’s underestimated him in a devastating way.  
  
“I’ll get it,” Henry says, when the doorbell rings, because he’s expecting packages containing their presents to be delivered, and Emma has promised not to check the credit card receipt to find out what they are, so he’s trying to keep the whole thing a secret.    
  
Henry expects the postman, and is instead faced with his father.  
  
Emma drops her toast and says, “Shit--” but only when it’s too late; Henry’s already gone through his, “Hello--how can I help you?” and Neal has already said, “Hi, I’m just here to see your mother--” and Henry has already responded to that with, “Which one?” and Neal has already said, “I’m an old friend of Emma’s--my name is Neal--” and at that point, it’s all over.  
  
A conversation from 2010: _His name was Neal, Henry, and I liked him very much at the time, but we weren’t in a relationship and he doesn’t know you exist.  I have no idea how to reach him, but please don’t think he’s abandoned you; he’s not that kind of guy.  If he knew about you, he’d be crazy about you._  
  
“Neal,” Henry repeats, and Regina finds herself chasing after Emma, who pauses in the kitchen doorway at the sight of Neal’s curious look at Henry, and Henry’s tense, tight little face in return.  “You’re … Neal.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Emma murmurs, blindly grappling for any part of Regina behind her as Neal’s eyes slowly draw up to them and realization dawns on his face.  “Look--I was going to tell you--”  
  
“Ma, is this--” Henry asks, like he can’t really believe it, and the way his face just blooms with curiosity and hope is enough to make Regina feel like she’s literally losing him.  Right now.    
  
Emma nearly squeezes her hand off, and then just says, “Yeah, kid.  That’s him.”  
  
It takes a few moments for anyone to get their bearings after that, but it’s Neal who recovers first, bending down and looking at Henry closely, a hand almost reaching for him but not quite touching, and then he just says, “... wow.”  
  
“Yeah... Wow,” Henry echoes back, and Emma makes a pained, small little noise; it’s as helpless as Regina herself has ever felt or sounded.  
  
“Why don’t you come in, Mr. Cassidy?” she forces herself to say, because her wife doesn’t seem like she’s going to be capable of saying anything anytime soon, and Henry--  
  
Henry has never not wanted to know more about his father.  In a happily-ever-after, it’s inconceivable that anyone would decline him the opportunity.  
  
…  
  
There are constants in all universes, and when Henry says, “So--are you leaving again soon?” she can almost see Neal’s response as if it’s written on a script that she herself once pieced together.  
  
“No; no, I think I’m going to stick around awhile,” he says, and eats another slice of her toast and drinks another sip of her coffee and shares another look with her son.  
  
She’s going to have to murder him.  It’s just a question of _how_ , and _when_.  
  
…  
  
A shower is doing nothing to decrease her tension levels, and so when a knock sounds on the bathroom, she snaps, “ _What_?”  She shivers when a waft of cold air comes in with Emma, who just sits down on the edge of the tub and says, “He’s gone.  Says he needs to make some arrangements to stay a little longer, and the kid’s off to school.”  
  
“It’s funny; you say gone, but it sounds like what you really mean--” Regina says, ducking her hair under the spray one more time.  Even under the water, she can hear Emma sigh.  
  
“What do you want me to do, huh?  I didn’t give him any choice in giving up his parental rights--”  
  
“Parental rights?  He’s a glorified sperm donor, dear.  Don’t try to romanticize it now just because he’s going to try to insinuate himself into Henry’s life--”  
  
“Jesus _,_ give me a break, okay?  I’m on your side in all of this,” Emma says, sounding utterly miserable, and Regina shuts off the shower and reaches for a towel, brushing her hair back out of her eyes before winding it around herself.  Emma stares at her and then says, “What do you want me to do?  Do you actually want me to say that I’m sorry I fucked him?  Because I’m not--”  
  
Regina stares at both of them in the mirror, and it’s both hilarious and sickening, how they look identical in this scenario.  What a difference a wish makes.  Emma is no longer the interloper; they now have a common enemy in Neal Cassidy, who may or may not have been a criminal and in any event, is not someone they need in Henry’s life.  
  
“Look, we’re not in charge of how this develops, but...” Emma says, and then closes her eyes for a few seconds.  “If I was Henry, I’d--be pretty pissed at my mothers if they refused to let me get to know the guy.”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, because it may simply be intuition on Emma’s part, but it’s factual awareness for her.  “It would turn him against us; _not_ that man.”  
  
“But I’m not just going to let some stranger run around with my kid,” Emma then adds, frowning a little.  “So--I guess--”  
  
“We could just kill him, you know,” Regina says, heading for the sink and reaching for her daytime facial cream; the goop that makes her look young enough to be in a relationship with the girl sitting on the edge of the tub next to her.  “I doubt he’ll be missed.”  
  
Emma snorts, and then tugs on the end of the towel.  “Why don’t we call that _plan B_ , and for now, I’ll just--chaperone.”  
  
A huff escapes Regina, as she swipes her fingers through the cream.  “How lovely.  The biological family, reunited once more.”  
  
“Oh, for _fuck’s_ sake, Regina--I slept with the guy once and knew him for a grand total of twenty four hours.  It’s embarrassing that I have to deal with that all over again.  It’s not--”  
  
Regina stops rubbing cream into her forehead and says, “I know.  I’m--what you’re proposing to do makes sense.”  
  
“Okay,” Emma then says, before getting to her feet and, after a second of hesitation, squeezing her into a really tight hug from behind.  “I’m incredibly sorry about all of this.  I can’t imagine how you feel--”  
  
Regina manages a smile, and then shakes her head.  “Don’t.  Without him, we wouldn’t have Henry.  We’ll manage.”  
  
Emma kisses her shoulder, right where it meets her neck, and then disappears out of the bathroom again, presumably to clear her schedule in the run-up to Christmas so that she can ensure that Henry isn’t getting roped into a dangerous relationship with a dangerous man.  
  
Regina looks at herself in the mirror for a few moments, and wonders if she’s actually capable of trusting the very person who more or less took Henry away from her to not let the same thing happen to them.  
  
…  
  
“Wow,” Killian says, which adequately covers the developments of the last twenty four hours.  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it further, so if we could just--” Regina says, gesturing towards the stable and tapping her riding crop against her own thigh; if any magic remains in her at all, it’s restless now, running up to the surface and about to overflow.  
  
She might be able to ride it out, and if she can’t--  
  
No, she’ll deal with that scenario should it arise.  
  
…  
  
When she gets to the diner, the visual is so acutely jarring that she freezes with her hand on the door, outside, looking in through the window.  Neal is chewing a fry apart in pieces, laughing at something Henry is saying and looking at him with a kind of hesitant fondness that she recognizes all too well; her son is a goddamned miracle, and he wraps everyone around his fingers with even a little exposure.    
  
Emma is also staring at Henry, but then occasionally glances over at Neal, who occasionally glances back, and Regina thinks of Snow and Charming and how even with the curse, the curse that should’ve destroyed any possibility of them remembering how they felt--  
  
She lets her hand fall away from the handle and then just heads further down the street.  There are more important things to worry about right now than feelings _,_ and Kathryn Nolan is the only person who can help her with them.  
  
…  
  
“I thought you were thinking about--” Kathryn says, putting a hand on her shoulder and rubbing it.  
  
Regina bats it off.  “Oh, for God’s sake, of course I don’t want to divorce her.  We’re in this together, for the rest of our lives.  It’s how it’s meant to be, and it’s how we’ll keep it--but with this man around--”  
  
“Regina, he was a one-night-stand eleven years ago,” Kathryn says, soothingly, before heading for the decanter of scotch she keeps in her office and pouring them both a drink.  “If she had any real desire for him to be in Henry’s life, don’t you think she would’ve gone looking for him before now?”  
  
 _That_ is true in both worlds, and it makes her stop pacing for just a few seconds.  
  
“You’re right.  For some reason, she didn’t want him around,” she then says, more to herself than to Kathryn.  “I need to find out what that reason was and remind her of it here.”  
  
“Or, you know, you could just trust that she’s madly in love with you and would never cheat on you.”  
  
Regina looks up sharply, and Kathryn looks back almost pityingly.  
  
“Regina, sweetheart, if we can all see it, why can’t you?  She’s worshipped you since she was a teenager, even if that does sound a little creepy now--”  
  
Regina laughs, painfully, and then shakes her head.  “It’s not that simple.  He’s--there is something about first love--”  
  
“Yes, there is,” Kathryn says, smiling and then handing over a drink.  “There is, which is why she thinks you literally hung the moon, okay?  I know you’re not very romantically inclined, you never have been, but--she would move mountains for you.  It’s sweet, the way she acts like she wouldn’t, actually--mostly because she knows that sentimentality totally rubs you the wrong way.”  
  
Drinking will not help her, here; there isn’t much that will, it seems, because legally, they’re golden when it comes to Henry’s presence in their life.  Neal could attempt to contest the adoption, but would be advised against it on all fronts if they’re willing to let him be in Henry’s life, at which point--if he is sincere about wanting to get to know the boy--he would back off.  
  
Legally, she’s golden--but the law has very little to do with the fact that she does not love her wife the way her wife loves her, let alone the way Neal Cassidy possibly doeslove Emma in kind.  
  
The power of unrequited love is exactly nothing, and if whatever it is that existed between Neal and Emma before was real--  
  
God, if it was real, she will lose both Emma and her son to this man, because they will be every bit as _meant to be_ as Emma’s parents had been.  It’s simply unacceptable for Emma to remember how she might’ve felt about Neal Cassidy two lifetimes ago, now.  Regina didn’t kill her own mother to be left with nothing all over again.  
  
She takes a large swallow of the drink, and then says, “You’re right.  I’m not particularly romantically inclined, but I might have to be, to ensure that there isn’t anything--”  
  
“Regina--”  
  
“I’m serious,” she says, and presses the drink to her cheek before letting go of a small sigh and then looking at Kathryn imploringly.  “What do you recommend?”  
  
Kathryn shakes her head, clearly convinced that she’s being crazy, but that hardly matters; if she plays her cards right, she won’t have to resort to murder to keep her son this time.  
  
…  
  
It’s difficult to say if this will work or not, but no matter what world they are in, Miss Swan doesn’t seem the candy hearts and flowers type.  
  
That leaves very few ways in which to forcibly remind her of where her loyalties should lie, and Regina has never believed in relying on anything other than her very best assets, regardless of what game she’s being made to play.  
  
She can hear her son chattering as he heads up the stairs and knows that Emma will shuffle him into his bedroom to start working on his homework before dinner, and knows, also, that that’ll be followed by a haphazard striptease of sorts, where the mayor is left behind and the sheriff reappears.  
  
Emma is actually already shrugging out of her jacket when she opens the door, and that’s how she misses the rather obvious surprise waiting for her there, but when she closes the door and turns around, the jacket drops from her hand.  
  
“Hello, dear,” Regina says, leaning back on her elbows; after a second, she slowly crosses her legs at the ankle, letting one dangerously high-heeled black stiletto dangle from her toes and the other one just snugly encase her foot.  
  
The world has been kind to her; she’s been thirty four for thirty years, now, and chasing after a child for most of that time has kept her trim.  Add her new job to that and she probably looks better now than she did when she was Emma’s age, let alone younger than that, eating her misery in Leopold’s kitchens and utterly uncaring as to what happened to her form.  
  
Emma’s jaw sinks down slowly, and then she just says, “Uh--”  
  
“Lock the door,” Regina orders.  
  
It’s the first time ever that Emma has silently just done what she was told, probably, and Regina makes a mental note to thank Kathryn for her only truly helpful suggestion of the day, which had involved some blushing and a mention that Fred also really appreciated lingerie from time to time.  
  
Emma is no different, it seems.  It almost makes her laugh, but this is a part she’s known how to play for a long time; one cannot rule with threat alone, and sometimes seduction has been the most powerful weapon at her disposal.  
  
“Are you serious?” Emma asks, which is a fairly unconvincing protest, given that she’s still slowly undressing and cannot stop staring.    
  
“Well, if you like, I could just go downstairs and start dinner--” Regina says, with a soft cluck of her tongue.  
  
This is a fascinating way to discover that her wife is apparently shy about certain things, and had she had any real reason to be proactive about their sex life before now, that would’ve been something she’d have used to her advantage long before now.  There are worse fates than being faced with an Emma Swan who is just dying to be with her, as it turns out; if she’s honest, there’s something pleasantly gratifying about seeing her once-nemesis actually go _stupid_ with desire.  
  
“No, that’s--uh--” Emma says again, before actually shaking her head as if she’s trying to clear cobwebs.  “I’ve just--it’s been a pretty messed up day.”  
  
Regina smiles, wide.  “I know.  I thought we could both... relax a little.”  
  
“ _Relax,_ ” Emma repeats, before shrugging out of her shirt and flicking the button to her slacks open.  “Yeah, okay.”  
  
Regina pauses, watching as Emma kicks off her pants, and then--with a small pout--says, “I’ve been a little absent lately.  I think it’s high time I make up for that.”  
  
Emma glances up from where she’s collecting her pants and draping them over the chair by the vanity, and then just says, “Don’t--make it about that.  If you want to have sex, then just say so; don’t act like you’ve been letting me down or anything.  You haven’t.”  
  
Of course not; there is no _letdown_ in _happy ending_ , Regina thinks, before lifting her hand and just beckoning Emma closer.  Surprisingly, she finds that she’s actually quite comfortable; it’s probably because Emma just sort of tip-toes towards her, as if utterly unaware of the amount of control she’s about to cede.  
  
“Even if I don’t have anything to make up for, dear, I’d say it’s probably in your best interest to just let me do what I want to you,” she then says, as Emma stops at the foot of the bed and seemingly waits for further instruction.  
  
After a second, Emma cocks one of her hips and looks at her with a knowing half-smile.  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with who I had lunch with today, would it?”  
  
Regina feels her expression slip, just for a moment.  “I’m not sure what you mean.”  
  
“Well--I haven’t seen you wear something like that in... hm, maybe _ever_ ,” Emma says, and Regina feels her eyebrows contract at the notion that Emma actually assumed she didn’t own things like this in the other world; it’s yet another sign that all she was, back then, was Henry’s mother and the woman who destroyed her childhood.  “And it could be interpreted as you trying a little to--remind me of what I have waiting for me at home.”  
  
“Do you need the reminder?” Regina asks, unable to hide the tension in her voice now, as Emma shifts a knee onto the bed and then starts crawling towards her, in a pair of simple red panties and a matching red bra.  
  
Emma gives her a wry look, as if to say, _be serious_ , which is amusing if only because this is as serious as Regina has ever been about their de facto relationship.    
  
“I saw you, today,” she finally admits, as Emma hovers over her; they’re barely touching anywhere, and she realizes on some level that she’s starting to lose her grip on the scenario that she concocted, but there isn’t much she can do about it with Emma looking at her the way she is.  The most she can do is put her hands on Emma; remind her of who she’s with, right now.  “At the diner.  You looked like you were having all sorts of fun.”  
  
“Henry was,” Emma says, evenly.  “Neal’s good with him.  I guess it’s that they’re both guys, but--”  
  
It’s instinctive, the way her hand shifts up into Emma’s hair and winds around a few messy locks of it.  “You _all_ looked like you were having fun.”  
  
Emma blinks at her and then leans forward a little more, frown forming on her forehead.  “Right.  I see.  So... God, I can’t even call him an ex, you know that?  But you seriously think there’s something going on there?”  
  
“I don’t know, Emma; _is there_?” Regina asks, her hand tightening as some annoyance settles into Emma’s expression.  
  
“That’s really rich, coming from you.  You know, not _all_ of us have issues letting go of the first people we were with,” Emma says, sharply.    
  
They both freeze, and Emma looks stricken as soon as the words have left her mouth, but they cannot be taken back.  So many of the things they’ve done, they can simply not take back at all.  
  
“How _dare_ you compare--” Regina says, pulling upright; she drags Emma off her more or less by her hair, which results in a grunt of pain and a not-too-gentle shove at her shoulder until she lets go, but she barely notices.  All she can see is the way Emma’s eyes darken at her, purely in anger this time.  
  
“I’m _not_ comparing.  Unlike you, I’m not so insecure that I feel threatened by the fact that you were with someone else once, okay?  And I mean, it’s a lot, knowing how much you still love Daniel, and that I’m at best the runner up to this totally perfect relationship you had before--that I’ll always be the thing that you ended up settling for because--”  
  
“ _I_ _can’t change how I feel about him_ ,” Regina bites out, much more shrilly than she wants to.  
  
Emma’s mouth trembles briefly but then sets, and she leans forward again, until they’re almost nose to nose.  “You know what?  I don’t expect you to, but you might want to stop being such a bitch about the only person other than you that I’ve ever even slept with because Jesus, I obviously didn’t choose him.  I chose you, for fucking all of this--and you--”  
  
Regina stops, when the reality of those words sinks in.  Stops cold, actually, because there hadn’t been anything to discourage Emma from picking Neal Cassidy as her co-parent of choice; she was given enough power to erase Regina from existence in that moment and she didn’t.  She didn’t, where anyone else in her position would have done.  
  
A world without her, after all, would be far less complicated.  Henry would be absorbed into the large family structure that Snow and Charming are in the process of creating, and given the spell, he wouldn’t even have to _remember_ that he’d had a different, less loving mother once.  
  
Emma could have erased her, and she _didn’t_.  
  
“Seriously, fuck you, Regina,” Emma says, in a way that sounds more hurt than upset, and Regina looks at her and wonders what it must be like to be so unmitigatedly _good_ that even when given a carte blanche for a beautiful life, the most Emma managed was choosing a fair one.  “You think this has been easy for me?”  
  
Emma is always at her most appealing when on the verge of losing it.  Another truth for all universes, and there’s something about the swelling darkness behind her eyes now that Regina finds she really cannot look away from.  
  
“No,” she says, and in a far more deliberate way this time, reaches for the back of Emma’s neck and digs her nails into it, until she can see the patience that has colored the new and improved Emma Swan’s every movement _snap_.  Then there are angry hands pushing her back into the mattress, Emma’s nostrils flaring as they hover on the precipice of something very different from their normal interactions.  Regina hesitates, studying eyes still most familiar to her when absolutely _not_ looking at her with any love, and then just barely licks at her lips, knowing it will be enough.  “I don’t think this has been easy for anyone.”  
  
When Emma’s mouth descends on her own, she can’t even really say which one of them has taken this supposedly _romantic seduction_ and has turned it into something angry and bitter and destructive, but she’s definitely not in charge of what it’s become.  No, it’s Emma who literally claws at one of the garters she spent a good few minutes snapping to her thigh-highs, and when nails dig into her thigh and Emma’s teeth dig into her lip, she finds that she’s actually not really capable of thinking about anything but how this is the only way they could’ve ever really ended up in bed together:  
  
Pushing and pulling each other until something finally is forced to give.  
  
…  
  
When she comes, it catches her off guard.    
  
She didn’t even realize she was close; all of her focus has been on ensuring that Emma gets to a point where she _has_ to beg for release--where Emma concedes and she has _won_ \--and they’re there, now.  They’re right there.  There’s something wild and desperate in Emma’s eyes, glazed over as they are, and the girl just groans when she stops moving her fingers again.  
  
“God, _you bitch--_ ” is how Emma surrenders, dropping her forehead to Regina’s shoulder and digging teeth into her neck without a single concern for whether or not it hurts; all she seems to care about is the way her hips are chasing Regina’s hand, but she’s still not getting enough purchase on her fingers to actually climax.  Regina wants to laugh at how easy this has turned out to be, how well she can read what Emma really wants even _without_ any false memories to fall back on, but then Emma sucks on the bite on her neck and twists her thumb _just so_ and--  
  
Her nails carve sharp lines in Emma’s back, to the point where Emma moans in something that might actually be pain, but she doesn’t have the presence of mind to care; it’s soundless, the way her body bows off the bed and lifts Emma up with it, and it’s ceaseless, the way she feels herself wind tighter and tighter around fingers that, in spite of everything, seem to know exactly how to touch her.  
  
“Regina--damn it, I’m so--” Emma demands weakly, as she sinks back down; it’s more of a plea than a demand, actually, and at the idea of pleading, Regina clenches one final time and then gives in, curling her own fingers upwards and flexing them, once, twice--  
  
Emma chokes out a moan when it hits her; the sound wrenches from her slowly, and when it does, it mostly disappears into Regina’s mouth, their lips crushing together as Emma flutters for a long moment and then just weakly sinks down fully on Regina’s equally spent body.  
  
Two sticky fingers press against her inner thigh, against a few scratches that are already beginning to throb, and Regina feels as if she’s sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the pounding rush of blood in her own ears and Emma’s soft gasps for air the only things audible in the room.  
  
Long moments later, Emma stiltedly rolls over onto her back and covers her face with her hands, and then says, “Oh my God. I have no idea what--”  
  
“For the love of God, don’t apologize,” Regina says, too sated to actually be annoyed with Emma’s vaguely predictable backtracking.  
  
It’s only as she shifts and her entire frame hums with a pleasant, serious soreness that it occurs to her that she didn’t think of Daniel once in the last hour.  The panic she expects to feel at any idea of this having been solely about Emma is simply not there; the way that she’d made Emma beg for release was utterly appealing in its own right.  The savior, proverbially on her knees; _this time_ , it felt as good as it always should have done.  
  
Her loyalty to Daniel has been in her heart and there alone for years now, and so there is nothing to regret here.  She shifts her head, looking at Emma as she slowly uncovers her eyes again.  
  
“God,” Emma says when she catches sight of Regina’s torso, and reaches for her with tentative fingers.  “I really--”  
  
Those fingers probe at a bruise on her neck and scratch marks on her sides, and Regina wonders what it means that truly, it has never really felt like this relationship between them couldlast until now.  
  
Now, it seems both possible and vital that they pull through, and so she reaches for a strand of Emma’s hair and tugs on it gently.  “He’s _not_ staying.”  
  
Emma continues examining her, displaying an enticing mixture of shame and blatant interest at what she’s _done_ , and then says, “Of course he’s not staying.”  
  
“If Henry wants a relationship with him, we’ll tolerate it--but he needs to understand that you’ve made your choices, and you are not going to recant them just because he looks at you a certain way and it reminds you of how simple everything was in 2001.”  
  
Emma hesitates, and then presses fingertips against that bite mark on Regina’s neck again, before mumbling, “Well, maybe don’t wear a collar tomorrow and this will speak for itself.  Jesus, Regina, that was--”  
  
Regina feels her spine crack when she stretches, and then says, “Whatever it was, dear, it suits you.”  
  
Her wife looks at her like they’ve never seen each other before.  On impulse, Regina shifts in closer and kisses Emma in a way that’s almost consoling--as much as this has felt like themto her, it obviously has not to Emma.  
  
“Let’s order in, tonight, and watch a movie together.  The three of us,” she then says, managing to look like the wife Emma has decided she ought to be again, even if it feels a lot insincere after what they’ve just done to each other.  “Hm?”  
  
Emma sighs softly, but then relaxes a little anyway.  “Yeah, that sounds really nice.”  
  
“Good.  Apply some concealer to your neck before you join me downstairs,” Regina then adds, and tries not to smile when Emma glances down at her own chest with another look of mild horror.  “There are some things about us our son doesn’t have to know about.”  
  
At that simple reminder, Emma looks at her and she feels the way she did when they first decided they would do this to each other all over again; as if sometimes, it’s the least expected offerings of trust that end up being the truest of all.  
  
…  
  
The week passes quickly, and she sees Neal only at the very end of it.  Her mouth twists down when Emma hugs him, but she does it the way she hugs Mary Margaret and Ruby; it means very little, more of a _hello_ or a _goodbye_ than any expression of emotion.  
  
Henry is more distraught at the idea of Neal leaving after so short a while, but the scenario executes better in this world than she’d let it in hers, and so Neal promises to write and visit and call, where possible, and Henry gets handed a watch of his own--something to remember the man by.  
  
Only then does Neal look at Regina; he smoothly excuses himself  before walking back to the house and standing in front of her.  
  
“You didn’t lie.  She's really happy,” he then says, and the loss that paints his tone makes Regina leave her triumph at just a small nod.  He looks at her closely for a few seconds, and then says, “I don’t know what to make of you.  You’re scary as hell, lady, but--”  
  
“They are safer with me than they would be with anyone else alive, you included,” she cuts him off, and wonders if it’s worth telling him that he came very close to not seeing another sunrise.  He doesn’t need a warning that explicit, though, and after a second she just smiles.  “Be well.  Henry would be devastated if anything were to happen to you.”  
  
He shakes her hand more firmly this time, and she watches him get into his car, honking as he drives off.  Henry sulks back into the house, shoulders dragging as he heads up the stairs to his bedroom to look at his new watch, and Regina closes the door behind Emma, who lets go of a huge sigh, as if being confronted with her own past has been the single most exhausting thing that’s ever happened to her.  
  
“He’ll be fine,” Regina says, because whatever Neal will be to them, now, he isn’t another Emma; he isn’t indispensable to Henry, and they will not let him become it.  
  
Emma nods, and then looks at her and says, “I didn’t want him to be around for Christmas.  It’s--that will never have anything to do with him, even if Henry would dig the extra presents.  Christmas is about us.”  
  
“I know,” Regina says, and reaches for the small of Emma’s back; a space that seems made for her to put her hand, if only to guide Emma towards the destinations that they should both be keeping in mind, always.  
  
…  
  
When Henry goes to bed, after having spoken to Neal on the phone and making them both swear that they will wake him up first thing to open up presents and watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ , Emma looks at her for a few moments and then slowly says, “I’ve been thinking about--well, what happened the other day, you know, in bed--and--”  
  
“Spit it out, dear,” Regina says, because she’s had enough wine to not want to bother with anything complicated; it’s their anniversary, and it’s a given that they’ll end up having sex tonight, and all she’s been wondering the last few hours is what she can do that will aggravate Emma enough for a repeat of the last time.  
  
Satisfying really only covers the surface of how it had felt to come together that violently.  It had been the opposite of suffocating, the way that Emma’s more gentle attention always seems on some level; yet Emma hadn’t been careless, the way Leopold had always been.  Not at all.  
  
She has no idea where to place the encounter on the scale of all the experiences with sex she’s had, but then neither does Emma, it seems.    
  
“Is it wrong that I--I don’t know, I just--” Emma starts to say, before helplessly sighing and looking at her.  “I liked it?  Not--you know, the idea of hurting you, but just--I don’t know--it was--”  
  
“Out of control,” Regina says, finishing the rest of her wine and placing it back on the table.  “Reckless, impulsive, utterly and dangerously self-serving, and all in all rather spectacular.”  
  
“Well--yeah,” Emma agrees, slowly, before prodding at the inside of her cheek with her tongue for a second.  “... want to do it again?”  
  
Regina smiles, and considers what else she can do to this world to make it feel like she actually belongs in it.


	7. Chapter 7

_Five_  
  
 _…_  
  
As had been the case in the last Storybrooke, the masquerade never truly ends.  
  
She likes to imagine that she’d been herself with Henry, at least during those first years they were together--before it became pertinent that his image of her matched what the town thought, albeit softened around the edges.  In a way, she supposes she was herself; a version of it, at least, that she had forgotten how to be.  
  
Henry received what remained of the very best of her, and when it came to parenting decisions, there was only one source of input that she sought, late at night in bed by herself--his ring clenched tightly in her hand, and her eyes closed to everything current.   _Am I doing right by him?_ she’d asked, almost every single night, and the Daniel in her mind would always assure that she was doing fine.  
  
Emma hadn’t been wrong about one thing: they had wanted children, and she has done everything in her power to raise the son that Daniel would have wanted, but forty years have passed since she last saw him, and the things he would’ve wanted for them have become more and more difficult to hold on to.  
  
The one thing she's certain he wanted is far more recent.  
  
In the new Storybrooke, Regina twists her wedding rings around her finger and looks at the snoring form next to her, and wonders what Daniel would say about the lies that she is choosing to protect; if this life is even remotely close to the final wish he had for her.  
  
Most nights, it simply smarts to know that he held her capable of much more than she actually seems to be.  
  
…  
  
Halfway through January, she’s taking a bath after a long day of riding in terrible conditions when the front door slams shut; that _bang_ is followed by an added cacophony of noise, and for one second she thinks she’s actually being robbed.  As quickly as she can, she slips out of the tub and towels off, but by the time she’s getting to her legs, it abruptly becomes clear that no one has broken and entered into her house.  
  
The volume of the music emanating from the study alone is enough to make her feel like she’s about to experience a magic migraine _sans_ magic, but it’s the sight of Henry sticking his head out of his bedroom with a look of utter befuddlement that really makes her head start to pound.  
  
“What’s going on _?_ ” Henry asks, in a hushed stage whisper.  
  
Her son, here, grew up in a household full of classical music and soft jazz and the occasional rhythm and blues.  Regina doubts he would’ve expressed any real concern over these noises a year ago, but here, in the Stepford-esque upper middle class life that Emma has crafted for him, he has zero context for the little fit that she is throwing downstairs.  
  
“Go back to bed, dear; I’ll go and see,” she says, applying just enough force to her tone for him to nod and then retreat again.  He’s the opposite of disobedient here, and as she heads downstairs, it hits her that she actually misses the way he used to challenge her.  
  
In a town full of sheep, the only people to have ever challenged her at all had been Henry and his mother.  That, too, has been wished away, now.  
  
As soon as she opens the door to the study, Emma looks up from where she’s pouring herself a drink--the second, by the looks of the ice in the glass--and seemingly realizes what she's doing all at once.  “Oh, shit--did I wake you?”  
  
“ _My_ bedtime isn’t eight forty five on regular school nights,” Regina says, as Emma heads to the computer and clicks a few things until the volume dissipates.  Regina’s ears are already ringing; the fact that no one in the Enchanted Forest ever invented the electric guitar doesn’t seem as if it was an oversight.  “Care to explain what you’re doing?”  
  
There’s something caught-out about the look that passes over Emma’s face, but then she just takes another sip of her drink and exhales slowly.  “It’s nothing.  Just--work.”  
  
Curiosity about alternative approaches to managing this self-contained, imaginary town has Regina stepping forward and taking a seat on the back end of the office couch, before crossing her hands in front of her chest.  “What about work?”  
  
Emma runs an exhausted hand through her hair and then just shakes her head.  “Everything.  I can’t get through a single day of people actually behaving rationally about anything, and today had three guys in my office to tell me that the nuns had too much parking.  ' _If God is in all of us, they don’t need seven parking spaces to talk to him.'_ ”  
  
Regina laughs, because it’s the kind of slithery thing Jafar would’ve coolly come to her office to complain about.  The chip on his shoulder about selling discount carpets was an ongoing source of entertainment to her, but then _she_ never had any particular loyalty to his neighbors.  “What did you tell them?”  
  
Emma mutters a response, and when Regina raises her eyebrows, sighs.  “I told them that I had a message from God for them myself, basically.”  
  
“And now they're lodging a 34.3 against you,” Regina says, unable to hide a smile.  
  
Emma glances up, taking another sip of her drink in a way that can only be described as sulking.  “Yeah, they are.  It’s just that they showed up right when I was on the phone with Sheriff Mulan about whoever it is that’s been vandalizing the playground by Sean and Ashley’s; and Mrs. Hodgkins over at the bakery filed another complaint against the guy next door because his Tourette’s puts people off her pastry, and--”  Emma closes her eyes briefly and then just says, “I honest to God don’t know what the point of this job is, sometimes.  You know?”  
  
Regina takes a few steps forward, towards the desk, and grabs the once-again empty glass.  “The point of the job, dear, is to ensure that little spats stay little.  It’s to settle everyone’s interests to a general satisfaction, not a particular one--so when Mr. Khan shows up to complain about parking allocation to the nuns, you tell him that you will consider his complaints when the next rezoning of the town commercial districts takes place.”  
  
“We're not planning to rezone--"  
  
“He’s on the border of the residential district, Emma. The last thing he wants is a rezoning; population growth patterns suggest that we need less commerce and more housing, so--”  
  
She knows she’s said too much when Emma starts slowly tilting her head and looks at her as if trying to untangle a knot with the power of her mind alone.  It takes a few seconds only, however, and then Emma blinks, the moment forgotten.  
  
“Okay.  That’s a good idea,” Emma then says, sighing softly and unbuttoning the cufflinks at the ends of her shirt; silver swans that Regina bought for her upon her appointment, according to her catalogue of memories.  “I don’t know, I just--I want everyone to be happy and it seems that no matter what I do, I’m always screwing someone over.  You’d think that with a town this small it would be easy--”  
  
“If happiness were truly easy, dear, it wouldn’t be worth wishing for,” Regina says, before holding up the empty glass.  “Another?”  
  
Emma hesitates, and then shakes her head.  “Nah, you know I don’t drink much.”  
  
The cognitive dissonance of the last five minutes--where Emma seems to realize that she hates her job, but cannot seem to remember anything else about herself--is enough to make Regina sigh deeply.  “Of course you don’t; not in this world, right?”  
  
Emma blinks at her owlishly and says, “Yeah--what kind of example would I be setting for Henry if I had a history of hooking up with total strangers after a night out at a bar?”  
  
Regina pauses at the lucidity of that response--not to mention the ridiculousness of it--and then carefully asks, “When was the last time you did that?”  
  
“It would’ve been--” Emma starts to say, before frowning and looking at the empty glass for a long moment.  Her pupils dilate so abruptly that Regina feels the hair on her arms rise, but then Emma looks back up at her and scratches at the side of her face.  “I’m sorry, what was I saying?”  
  
“You were about to accept another drink,” Regina says, inclining the glass and punctuating the gesture with one of her more … charming smiles, for lack of a better word.  “Scotch, neat, yes?”  
  
“Yeah, why not,” Emma says, but there’s a hauntedness behind her eyes that doesn’t quite disappear until she’s had another few sips and Regina engages her in a conversation about Henry’s forthcoming birthday party; all things of this world, and not the past lives that she’s not supposed to remember.  
  
…  
  
A few days later, Regina’s brushing down Rocinante when Killian leans up against the stable door and looks at her quietly.  
  
“You look like you’re up to no good,” she says, arching an eyebrow at him.  
  
His _what, me?  Never!_ expression is flawless, as it has always been, but then he folds his arms over the door and rests his chin on his hands and says, “I need your advice on something.”  
  
“If it’s taxes, you’re late--”  
  
He laughs, and then clucks at her disapprovingly.  “Regina, darling, finances aren’t all you’re good for.  You pay my bills, to be sure, but our love--it runneth deeper than that.”  
  
She rolls her eyes at him, pressing her nose to Rocinante’s neck for a few moments and murmuring a goodnight to him, and then heads out of the pen, shutting the door behind her and looking at Killian questioningly.  “What is it?”  
  
He rubs at the back of his neck for a few seconds, and then to her simultaneous glee and dismay, begins to blush.  “I’m not really sure how to put this, but--”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“I’ve been thinking about--well.  You know how you and Kat got me a dining set this Christmas; I’m still not sure where I’m going to put it, for the record, but I’m thinking about it--and that got me thinking about other things.”  
  
“Matching dinnerware?” she suggests, dryly.  
  
He ruffles her hair--a gesture that would’ve cost him his other hand, in a different life--and then says, “No.  It got me thinking about the apartment and how... well, it’s small, isn’t it.”  
  
“Killian, dear, we play poker on your coffee table.  Like this is still college, and you’re about to spike Kathryn’s fruit juice with vodka even though she’s not done with her finals--”  
  
He grins.  “She passed, didn’t she?”  
  
“Yes, I’m sure _that’s_ what she remembers about that week,” Regina says, hiding a smile and studying him closely.  “I think that your apartment was appropriate for you when you were twenty-three years old, but it’s been a decade and you still live there now.  Is that what you needed advice on?”  
  
“No,” he says, before taking a deep breath and then closing his eyes.  “I’ve been thinking about asking Ruby to move in with me.  To a bigger place.  Possibly in the suburbs.”  
  
She laughs, more at his use of the word suburbs--clearly what he means is the neighborhood she and Kathryn live in, away from the town center--than at the idea of him moving, and then realizes acutely that she’s actually fond of him.  Here, he’s a man with a dangerous streak that manifests itself in rock climbing and skydiving and getting Kathryn incredibly drunk from time to time, but he’s also a man who climbs onto her rooftop to fix a leak at three in the morning and a man who clocked a huge, bulky football player for being too handsy with his drunken friend Kathryn.  
  
She’s still smiling when she raises her eyebrows at him.  “Daring.  I’ve heard a move to the suburbs can be fatal.”  
  
“Oh, _ha ha,_ ” he says, rolling his eyes at her.  “That’s not what I meant.  I just want... well, you’re the bloody marriage expert, aren’t you?  Done it twice, great both times--”  
  
She scoffs.  “That’s a slight overstatement, dear.”  
  
“Please--look at you.  You’re obviously going through some sort of second honeymoon right now; that, or you’re pregnant, but I can’t imagine you having another baby without asking me to provide--well, you know.”  
  
She stares at him blankly for a few seconds.  
  
“Well, you would ask me, wouldn’t you?”  
  
“I’m--” she starts to say, and then just shakes her head at him.  “What is it you actually want to know, Killian?”  
  
They’re silent for a few moments, slowly heading out of the stables and towards their cars, and then Killian shoves his hands into his back pockets and stares up at the night sky; the moon is barely visible above the clouds overhead, and the whole world is white around them, reflecting that dim light back up.  “How do you know you’re ready?  To commit to living with someone, I mean.”  
  
It’s a hilarious thing to ask her, given how little say she got in it this time and how much she’d never had any opportunity actually find _out_ if she was ready the one time she’d wanted a life with someone else; and no, she hadn’t ever considered that they might not make it.   _I’m merely a stable boy,_ Daniel had said.  She’d never cared; still can’t imagine caring.  
  
Her breath sticks wetly in her throat when it occurs to her that intentional or not, Emma appears to have had similar concerns.  A life fit for a queen is what she’d attempted to construct; and here they are, the royal family of Storybrooke.  
  
“If there is one thing I can say about marriage,” she says, when Killian looks at her with a little concern after a prolonged silence, “it’s that it’s never quite how you imagine it to be.  Your relationship changes; sometimes daily.  Living with someone exposes you to qualities you never knew they had, both good and bad.”  She hesitates faintly, and then says, “Emma, for instance, sings in the mornings; it wasn’t something I knew before she moved in because she always snuck out before dawn, for Henry’s sake.”  
  
“Is she any good?” Killian asks.  
  
“No,” Regina says, before laughing to herself.  “No, actually, she’s completely tone-deaf and also only sings material that doesn’t suit her register.  I’ve considered signing her up for singing lessons for her birthday as a gift to myself, but God knows I don’t want to do anything that might suggest to her that she should sing _more_.”  
  
“So that’s the bad.  What’s the good?” Killian asks.  “I mean, there has to be something positive about giving up your own space, right, or people wouldn’t have been doing it for centuries.”  
  
Regina stares at their footprints in the snow, and then says, “Once, when Emma was... still in Boston, Henry was very sick; nothing urgent, it was merely a common cold, and so the hospital turned me back around with him and told me to just let him sleep it off.  He was--so very small.  Clammy, sick and weak, and he could barely voice how he felt.  When he finally fell asleep, I genuinely feared he might never wake up again; I stayed on my knees by his bed for an entire night and an entire day, until his fever finally broke and he smiled at me.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid in my life, and there was no one to share any of it with; no one who could possibly understand.”  
  
“But Emma would have,” Killian says, softly.  
  
After a few seconds, Regina exhales and adds, “That, and she’s very diligent about stocking the pantry.  The minute we’re low on anything, she gets more.  I never have to ask.  I have no idea how she keeps track, even, because I value my stomach lining too much to let her cook.”  
  
“So what you’re saying is that living together is good for dealing with sick children and having enough canned vegetables,” he says, looking at her with quiet amusement.  “That’s it?  That’s the pitch?”  
  
Regina sighs and then says, “No, you ingrate; the pitch is not having to do anything alone anymore.”  
  
“Huh,” he says, and then looks at her for a few more moments.  “And what about sex?  Judging by you, it’s not true what they say about marriage, but--”  
  
“Oh, for God’s sake, Killian--”  
  
“Hey,” he says, holding up his hands in apology.  “I’m a red-blooded man, I have certain needs--”  
  
“I pity the fool girl who actually wants to share her life with you,” she tells him, glaring until he laughs and heads off to his own car.  “Ruby can do far better.”  
  
“You’re not wrong, but luckily for me, she doesn’t seem to want to,” he calls back, and despite herself, Regina laughs as well.  
  
…  
  
Far later that day, with a glass of cider next to the fireplace, she looks over at Emma--reading over a report from the Sheriff’s Department with an eager red pen--and says, “Killian is considering asking Ruby to move in with him.”  
  
Emma looks up, and there’s something vaguely contagious about the genuine smile that spread across her face.  “Seriously?”  
  
“I’m as astounded as you are, dear.  It seems that--”  She trails off, wanting to say something about the passage of time, but it’s hard to say if that’s what caused this.  Perhaps it was Emma’s explicit wish that they commit; and then again, perhaps it wasn’t.  Perhaps she merely provided them with a setup that would make Hook want to settle down; the roaming life, after all, is primarily for miserable people.  
  
Emma whistles softly and then shakes her head.  “That’s great.”  
  
“Hm,” Regina agrees, watching the fire for another few moments and then smiling faintly.  “He asked me how he’d know that he was ready for this.  Apparently, I’m expert at cohabitation.”  
  
Emma makes a small noise and then says, “Yeah, you’re really good about sharing your space; it wasn’t at all like voluntarily walking into a mine field at first.”  
  
Regina stops, glass almost at her lips, and looks at Emma sharply.  “What did you say?”  
  
“Just that--you know, you were really tetchy about me being around all the time.  Like just by being in a room, I was getting in the way of whatever it was that you’d do without me there.  High quality brooding, I guess,” Emma says, distractedly; another red slash is added to the page and then she sighs.  “You know, just once, I wish Mulan would complete her paperwork with more than just _problem discovered; problem resolved._ I have no idea what she’s even talking about here.”  
  
“As her superior, you can _make_ her do that,” Regina says, before closing her eyes and filtering through her memories of their time together; the months following Christmas, punctuated by exploratory sex and hushed escapes into the early morning... and then the months following that, punctuated by Emma simply being in the house, fully immersed into shared routines, schedules of bedtime reading and laundry embedded in both of their minds.  
  
She frowns and studies Emma carefully for a few seconds, before then asking, “How did you know that you were ready to move in with me?”  
  
The corner of Emma’s mouth is starting to turn red with ink from where she’s compulsively chewing on the end of the pen, and there’s something altogether dazed about the girl when she looks across the room.  “I don’t know.  I mean, at some point you have to just--shit or get off the pot, right?”  
  
“Lovely,” Regina says, rolling her eyes.  “How I ever managed to resist you--”  
  
“I’m kidding.  I guess... it was when I realized that we’d be better off doing this together,” Emma amends, capping the pen and lowering it to her lap, alongside the report.  After a few seconds, and then she adds, “And, I mean, it’s what you do when you’re in love with someone.”  
  
“Killian would beg to differ,” Regina says, mildly.  
  
“ _Killian_ talks a big game, but we both know what he really wants.  He’s just kind of a coward about it,” Emma says, in a way that reminds Regina so much of Snow at her most irritating moments that she has to swallow the immediate urge she has to defend what her best friend is doing.  
  
That urge is ridiculous, of course, because he’s only her best friend by design, and regardless--Emma is right about him, even if there is something painfully ironic about her calling someone else out on being scared of a lasting commitment.  
  
“Anyway--good on him, if he’s finally trying to grow up a little,” Emma says, before putting her report to the side and stretching out her legs, socked feet creeping up on the coffee table until Regina pointedly stares at them.  They lower back to the ground, and then Emma just looks at her and rolls her eyes.  
  
Something in Emma is changing, even if Regina cannot quite put her finger on what it is; whatever it is, it has meant that conversations that used to feel almost farcical are now being imbued with elements of reality, even if they usually end abruptly and she never actually knows what to make of them.  
  
The look in Emma’s eyes, on the other hand, as she stares at Regina for a few more seconds--this time without eye-rolling--is far less disconcerting and easy enough to understand.  
  
Predatory isn’t ever a word she’s associated with Emma Swan, not consciously, but she supposes the girl did hunt for a living for years on end, and anyway, it suits her.  Unlike the gimmicks of devoted wife and role-model mother, the way that Emma’s eyes narrow onto the hem of Regina's skirt before she slowly pushes off the couch feels utterly real.  
  
“That’s one of hell of a skirt, Mrs. Swan,” Emma says, rubbing at the back of her neck for a few seconds.  “Let’s find out how you look _out_ of it.”  
  
Affairs are really very simple; everything about them is a thrill, and regardless of what else is going on in this world, Regina knows that she’s currently in the midst of one with someone she just happens to be married to.  
  
…  
  
Winter in Maine is treacherous enough for riding to be a bad idea--even Emma has seen The Horse Whisperer, and absolutely forbids them from riding anywhere near the few roads in and out of Storybrooke--but the idea of giving up Sundays with her son is unbearable.  Even after nearly four months, when Henry’s birthday is only a few weeks away, this is the pinnacle of her existence here--an uninterrupted stretch of time where Henry is all hers, all over again.  
  
Sharing him with Emma is painless at this point, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t remember what it used to be like; that every time Henry smiles at her, she can’t remember all the days that he simply couldn’t and was right not to.  
  
Truly, the only times that she feels that she’s in any way deserving of this world is when she realizes she’s finally doing right by Henry, even if all that means is slowly walking the horses down by the coast, towards where his ruinous castle stands once more.  A token of love from Emma, she knows, but one that she doesn’t have to resent now.  
  
“We’ll rebuild it,” she says, spotting it in the distance.  “Later this year.  We’ll ask your mother to free up some funds.”  
  
He’s almost eleven now, and he looks at her as if he’s far older than that still.  “Mom, it’s just some wreck.  You don’t need to spend money on that.  I think new grass for the soccer field is going to be a lot more important--I can’t play junior league anymore next year and um, one side of the normal field is really muddy.  I heard Sean say the other day that if you try to do a slide tackle there it really sucks, you just get sucked into the ground.”  
  
This is her time with Henry, but as she looks at the castle in the distance, all she can think of is that it would be fantastic to have a version of Emma here who would look at how quickly he is growing up, and understand how terrifying it is that they can’t do anything to stop it from happening.  
  
“Are you crying?” Henry asks, sounding stricken.  The horses come to a halt and he slides off his, clumsy and still nearly falling to the ground, but then he moves next to Rocinante and just reaches for her leg.  “Geez, Mom, we can rebuild the castle if you really want to--”  
  
“No, Henry.  It’s okay,” she says, forcing herself to smile as she runs a hand through his hair.  “It was just an idea.”  
  
…  
  
It takes her a good five minutes to clear the headstone, and by then her fingertips are reddened and burning.  It feels good, just that little reminder of pain; pain  has been her constant companion for decades now and nothing unsettles her more than that she’s starting to forget what it feels like.  That here, she needs reminding of the things she has lost, because they don’t seem quite so terrible.  
  
That thought feels like the worst kind of betrayal, and she feels her eyes mist over as it strikes, even as it becomes harder to hang on to concerns from three worlds ago with every passing day.  
  
Daniel wouldn’t want her to.  She _knows_ that, and she grapples for something inside of her that reminds her of what it was like to live only for revenge.  It truly wasn’t long ago that she existed purely to see Snow White and fantasize about destroying even the little things that gave her pleasure, such as banning all the cinnamon in Storybrooke; but now, all she can see when she thinks of hot chocolate is her son with a creamy mustache, laughing with his other mother as they watch cartoons together in the living room.  
  
There is a new emptiness inside of her; nothing like what the curse wrought, nothing that prevents her from loving her son the very best way she knows how, but that which burned through her for decades and kept her focused on a singular goal now barely simmers, and it has left behind a giant void that she does not know how to fill.  
  
Whatever anger remains in her is different now, and she crouches down and runs her fingertips along his name and then sighs.  She just sighs, because the questions she has these days, he simply wouldn’t know how to answer.  He can’t tell her why Emma would’ve trapped them in this relationship indefinitely; why she’s letting time pass, when the safest thing for all of them would be this frozen moment of Henry being ten.  Their boy, forever.  A reason for living together under one roof.  
  
Without him, there _is_ no happiness.  
  
She takes a deep breath and gets back to her feet again, staring at the grave she crafted only so very recently, to bury someone gone for so long, and then stares at the next grave over, covered in icicles, only a _C_ visible underneath layers of frost and snow.  
  
After a long moment, she ducks her nose into her scarf and closes her eyes. There isn't anything left for her to say or do; nothing that will make a difference, here.  
  
…  
  
The questions continue to plague her.  
  
In bed, they are on a wavelength that defies explanation; outside of it, Emma oscillates between the nightmarishly perfect spouse that Regina tolerates and avoids in equal measure, and someone far more reminiscent of before.  The latter moments are mere flashes, but they are becoming increasingly regular; it’s particularly in the moments that they are fucking that sometimes, she swears Emma looks at her in a way that brims with resentment.  
  
She doesn’t know why, but dealing with _that_ Emma is infinitely easier than having to navigate daily around someone so accommodating and patient that it makes her want to scream.  Between the gentle inquiries into therapy and the promises to do more around the house and the ever-present willingness to play bad cop with Henry, Emma has saddled her with a woman that reminds her far more of Emma’s mother than Emma herself.  
  
There are so many parts of this world that she finds almost comfortable that it rankles, the way that her home life frequently feels utterly shambolic, even though Henry’s happiness--and presumably, his family goes hand in hand with it--was the goddamned point of the entire spell.    
  
Eventually, as Emma is going down on her in a way that’s excruciatingly thorough and teasing simultaneously, she actually thinks, _Why can’t it be like this all the time?_  
  
She only realizes she’s said it out loud when Emma first pauses, then chuckles, the sound reverberating through her in an unexpectedly pleasant way. “Want me to quit my job and become your sex slave?”  
  
That unfortunate choice of words has Regina actually push Emma away with a deep sigh.  “Never mind.”  
  
“Hey, no,” Emma says, wiping at her mouth and looking at her in surprise.  “What’d I do?”  
  
“Nothing,” Regina says, reaching for her underwear on the floor and sliding it back on to her half-deadened legs.  “I just have a lot on my mind.”  
  
Emma reaches for her and looks at her with that ridiculous concern that she constantly displays now whenever Regina so much as sneezes, and it takes everything in Regina’s power to not just push her away again.  “Seriously--what did I do?”  
  
“Truthfully?” Regina asks, and Emma nods, so eager to do good even now that it’s pitiable; in the face of it, Regina finds that she cannot muster up the sympathy needed to lie.  “You wished for the wrong thing, dear.  That’s what you did, and now we’re both stuck with it.”  
  
The look on Emma’s face is one of pure incomprehension, and it lingers for hours--until Regina shuts off her light and puts her book aside.  Only then, in the dark, does Emma speak again.  
  
“We’re not stuck,” she says, to the ceiling; Regina shifts towards her and holds her breath at the purely tortured look on Emma’s face.  “I never meant for us to be stuck.  We can change anything that needs changing.”  
  
Emma turns to her then, and reaches for her cheek, pressing a thumb into it slowly and then staring at her with startling, worrying clarity.  
  
“The ingredients are all here, Regina, but I don’t know shit about cooking,” she then says, before blinking twice and letting her hand fall away.  “I love you,” she adds, then, because that is what happiness is: never going to bed angry, never going to bed unloved.  
  
…  
  
What Emma meant becomes clear to her only a few days later.  
  
On Valentine’s Day, they head for a romantic dinner at the club, which is what everyone else in town is also doing; Ruby is wearing a dress with a heart-shaped bustier and fishnet stockings underneath and tells them both in a sly whisper that everything they’re being fed is an aphrodisiac of some kind.  
  
Back in the Enchanted Forest, there had been plenty of magic that could create sexual interest, but she questions the potency of the oysters that Emma raises an eyebrow at before tentatively picking one up.  They’re divine, of course, but absolutely not to the girl’s taste, and it abruptly annoys Regina that _she_ knows this and Emma doesn’t.  
  
It must show on her face to some extent, because Emma lets the oyster slither in its shell and stares at her with a little trepidation.  “What?  Is this not--”  
  
“It’s fine _,_ dear,” Regina says, sighing covertly before reaching for a glass of champagne that Emma also doesn’t care for and drinking it.  “Everything is fine.”  
  
Emma stares at her for a few more seconds and then lowers the oyster back to her plate.  “You’re not happy.”  
  
“I said I’m fine--”  
  
“Okay, not this again,” Emma says, with the kind of urgency that makes Regina shut up and look at her closely.  “You’re not happy.  I can tell you’re not happy.  You need to tell me why.”  
  
“Emma, I assure you, I’m doing fine.  This dinner is … something from a movie.  Very sophisticated, and I can’t imagine it comes cheaply.”  
  
Emma’s jaw sets after a few seconds, and then she shakes her head.  “No, you don’t understand.  Cost is not the issue, all that matters is that we are all happy.  Do you want--we can go somewhere else if you like, you just have to--”  She frowns deeply and then reaches for her head, splaying fingers out along her forehead and rubbing with short, jerky movements.  “I thought this is what would be appropriate.  For the occasion.”  
  
At least half of Regina is morbidly curious to see just what will happen here if she continues to decline Emma an honest explanation, because with every passing second, the tension in the girl’s muscles grows, as if she might literally blow up if happiness isn’t somehow guaranteed in the next few minutes.  The rest of her, however, is conscious of the fact that they are not alone and that if Emma experiences some sort of backlash from the spell, this would absolutely not be the locale in which to deal with it.  
  
“Listen to me,” she says, when the table actually starts to shake a little with how hard Emma is gripping the edge of it with her spare hand.  
  
Emma looks up, eyes feverish and wild.  “Just tell me--”  
  
“I will be happy if you are,” Regina says, knowing as soon as the words have left her mouth that they are the right thing to say; that _this_ is how she reshapes this world.  
  
The clanging of silverware around them continues, but the time between them grinds to an abrupt halt, as if they’re hovering on the edge of a vortex of some kind and it’s only through sheer willpower that they’re not falling through.  It’s impossible, of course--there is nothing in this realm that could cause any such effect, except perhaps...  
  
She frowns, when it occurs to her that whatever else they may have dispelled, there is no telling if the magic in Emma has gone anywhere.  
  
Emma stares at her for a few moments, as if testing how genuine her answer is; her chest heaves, blouse settling awkwardly over her shoulders, and then she says, “I hate this food.”  
  
“I know,” Regina says, plainly.  It seems ill-advised to break eye-contact, even if at just that simple admission, Emma seemingly relaxes a little.  
  
The girl looks mostly surprised by what she’s saying, as if the ideas are coming to her through a particularly dense fog, but the words are articulate nonetheless: “I actually hate this whole holiday, but if we’re going to do anything for it, I want to go home and eat some normal food and I guess then we’re going to fuck, because I do like that dress you’re wearing.”  
  
Their waiter, an uptight, stoic Frenchman by the name of Gaston, nearly drops the carafe of water he’s holding, and Emma glances at him dismissively before looking back at Regina.  
  
“Would that make you happy?”  
  
Regina tries not to laugh at the look on the waiter’s face, and then says, “I think we’ll have the check, now.  Thank you.”  
  
…  
  
On Henry’s birthday, Neal Cassidy returns to town.  
  
A part of Regina is concerned that with every added nudge she issues to Emma to abandon the parts of their existence that feel most fraudulent, more and more of her actual personality will seep back into her consciousness and when she looks at Neal Cassidy, one day soon, she’ll see something that she didn’t realize she was missing.  
  
Nothing of the sort comes to pass, however.  No, Neal registers some surprise at Emma in a red leather jacket and a pair of boots, hair tied back into a low ponytail as she ushers children into the living room for the magician’s show that Henry had requested for his birthday party this year, but he accepts the glass of apple cider that Regina offers him without further comment.  
  
The magician is an utter hack, and she has to fight to not point out the illusion in every single one of his tricks; before she can do as much, though, Emma discerns that she’s bursting to say something and leans into her side. “He’s eleven.  Just let him believe for a little while longer.”  
  
It’s pointed enough to feel like a reminder from the real world, and after a second she just curls her arm around Emma’s side and watches the joy play out on Henry’s face.  
  
…  
  
In late February, she’s at the stables, following after Dr. Thatcher as he examines Little Mills.  The mare has been under bright lights for weeks now, and had been with a thoroughbred stallion named Domino two weeks prior; with any luck, she’ll be heading home to Henry with a list of potential names for the foal later today.  
  
“What is it, dear?” she says, turning away from the doctor’s gentle and thorough examination.  
  
“I actually hate this job.  I don’t know why I ever thought I could do it, even, but I’m going to kill the entire town council unless someone gets them out of my face pretty much right _now_.  Guess what?  They want to reconsider the school building budget; apparently, we need the money for the Miner’s Day Festival which--yeah, cotton candy is obviously _way_ more important than making sure that the gym is safe to be used by our kids again--”  
  
The rant is effusive, colorful and very familiar in tone if not in content.  At the end of it, when Emma finishes on a noise of pure frustration, Regina just sighs softly.  “Emma--if you don’t want to be the mayor then don’t be the mayor.  It’s your life.”  
  
“Well, who the hell _else_ is going to do the job?”  Emma demands to know.  “You know that if I step down during term, the town council will appoint an interim that’ll become permanent if nobody steps forward to run in a special election.”  
  
“What matters, dear, is your happiness,” Regina says, as the low hum of the ultrasound registers behind her.  “Do what makes you happy.”  
  
“Okay, I will, but I can’t just bail on all of these projects and these people,” Emma insists; a Charming in all the ways that matter, even now.  “They’ll pick Albert Spencer; the man is a bigoted extremist.  I’m not going anywhere unless someone decent is going to replace me.”  
  
Regina glances around the stables, before taking a few steps towards Rocinante, who lowers his neck towards her and nuzzles her hand loving in a way that very few have loved her, in the last few years.  It’s unconditional, this bond between her and her horse; it’s also untouched by magic, and so very real that she feels acute dread at the notion that she might be made to give it up.  
  
The silence on the phone is an obvious invitation, but she hesitates in the face of it.  Whatever part of her would feel a rush of victory at the idea of deposing a Charming from a throne that is rightfully hers, it’s so small that she can barely even focus on it with how her horse steps forward and nudges at the phone in her hand, clearly convinced it’s a treat for him.  
  
Her hand winds in his mane, rubs along his nose and behind his ears, and she feels as if she’s on a precipice that she cannot step back from; that this is the first clear chance Emma has given her to return to where they once stood, and that everything about their future hinges on what decision she makes, now.  
  
“There is an obvious candidate, dear,” Regina finally says, no fewer than five feet from where her true love had implored her to love again.  “Leave it to me.”  
  
…  
  
Kathryn looks at her in a way that’s so utterly shocked that she almost laughs.  
  
“What?” she then says, before looking at Fred, who is cooking a stir-fry in the kitchen.  “You want me to do what?”  
  
“It’s a question of character,” Regina says, crossing her legs and leaning forward.  “Yours is far more suitable for this position than Emma’s is.  She’d never ask you to run, of course, but you and I go back far enough where I thought it would be fine to broach it.  You can say no, obviously, but I’d like you to consider it, at least.”  
  
“Well, sure, I’ll think about it, but--” Kathryn says, before falling silent and staring at the table intently.  “I thought I’d take over the firm at some point; I’ve never really considered politics.”  
  
“Small town politics is truly no different from running a … firm such as your father’s, dear.  I can promise you that much.”  
  
Kathryn stays silent for a few seconds and then says, “You really think I’d be good at it?”  
  
“Better than most,” Regina says, with a smile that feels only slightly wry.  
  
…  
  
Emma takes her coffee with four sugars, two white and two brown, and likes it so piping hot that it can barely be held; it’s one of the little facts Regina has absorbed that feels the most true, and so she swings by Granny’s for two cups before heading up to her own old office.  
  
Aurora has her waiting in the hallway for a few moments, before getting up from her desk in a too-tight pencil skirt and heading for Emma’s office; a few moments later, shark-faced twins that she cannot immediately place walk out, one grumbling at the other about uncooperative mayors in stupid small towns and how ‘the boss’ isn’t going to be happy.  
  
“You can go in now,” Aurora says, with a small, polite smile that Regina doesn’t bother returning.    
  
When she gets in, a soft rush of familiarity settles in her, even as she spots Emma by the window, looking out longingly--as if she’d rather be anywhere but trapped in this office.  Regina closes the door behind her and says, “I brought coffee.”  
  
“Thanks.  Probably won’t cut through this headache, but it won’t hurt,” Emma says, looking over at her with a half-hearted smile.  
  
She’s seen Emma Swan in so many states, now; defeated is still the least attractive of them all, and so she heads over to the window and hands over the cup, wincing when Emma immediately brings it to her lips and starts drinking.  
  
“I’ve spoken to Kathryn,” Regina says, after a few seconds of just watching as Emma sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, soothing it with her own tongue, before drinking more.  
  
Emma glances over cautiously.  “Yeah?”  
  
Regina smiles faintly, after a few moments.  “She’ll run.  She’d like to learn the ropes from you before you hand over to Albert Spencer, of course--”  
  
Scalding coffee is pressed against her ribs as Emma pulls her into a hug without warning.  “Thank you so much.  I really didn’t want to--I don’t want to let anyone down or bail on my responsibilities, but this isn’t--”  
  
“It’s not you,” Regina says, her free hand on Emma’s spine, her eyes trained on the window outside, as Emma squeezes her tightly enough for it to hurt a little.  “It just isn’t you.”  
  
She can’t remember the last time anyone has held her like this, and then--  
  
Yes.  Then she can, but God, it was long ago.  
  
“She’s really okay with doing this?” Emma asks, pulling away and looking at her intently.  
  
The fingertips still gripping her around her waist tingle briefly, and after a second Regina sighs softly and steps away.  “She was born to do this, dear.  There is no shame in the fact that you weren’t.”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say--you’re a natural at everything.  The people on that budget committee love you,” Emma says, scoffing a little and then taking another sip of her coffee.  “You could totally do my job, if you wanted to.”  
  
Regina feels her smile falter, and then just tips the lid off her own coffee and blows on it softly.  “Perhaps.  I guess we’ll never know.”  
  
…  
  
The world is snowed in completely, as it tends to be in Maine in the winter, but her horses need to be kept warm and fed, regardless, and the Jeep has now become a sensible purchase in her mind.  The back roads that lead to the stables are irregularly plowed, given that little traffic makes it there in the winter months.  
  
In the small kitchenette, Killian makes a variety of hot drinks for them as they prepare to take the horses out on a short walk in the pasture behind the jumping grounds--a place so quiet and serene that a mere few months ago, she would’ve wanted to burn it to the ground.  
  
The Summer Palace had been cold by the time she was done stripping it of everything that reminded her of the Whites, and she’d thought of it as the Winter Palace in her mind, if only to ensure that her creation was antithetical to the wishes of the former queen.  The only thing that ever broke through the desolation she’d carefully created there had been her apple tree; a drop of blood in an inky well.  
  
It has been years since she’s been able to appreciate beauty, but here, in the slowly setting sun, casting streaks of warmth onto the white surface of the earth, the horses’ breath flaring out in small streamers next to them, and Killian’s mammoth footsteps only leaving marks for sheer moments, the majesty of the landscape she once created suddenly becomes undeniable.  
  
She halts, Rocinante bristling next to her but also coming to a stop, and brings a hand up to her chest and keeps it there for a long few moments.  
  
“Are you all right?” Killian asks, looking at her with a soft frown.  
  
“I--” she starts to say, and then just bites down on her lip for a few moments, looking down at her own chest and wondering if this was how it felt to Rumpelstiltskin, back when he’d first realized.  If he’d had a moment of looking at Belle and just thought, _I’m finally done_.  
  
Her hands tighten around the reins, but then she looks back up at Killian--her friend, here; a genuine one, as she barely knew his counterpart and has no reason to think him anything but himself--and manages a very small smile.  
  
“Just trying to remember where I put my car keys, dear,” she tells him, because friend or not, the moment feels too sudden and overwhelming to really share with anyone.  
  
…  
  
Awareness seeps in everywhere, after that; somewhere inside of her, a faucet full of it drips without pause.  
  
She has to fight a smile when she sees Kathryn and Fred, huddled together on Main Street when a gust of wind blows by and rips Kathryn’s umbrella cleanly out of her hand, and watches as Fred--ever the knight in shining armor--hurries after it, as Kathryn hurries after him yelling, “Babe, it’s just an umbrella”, until they disappear around the corner.  
  
She sees Jefferson and Grace, sharing a milkshake in the diner as Grace talks about her art project and her father looks at her with all the love of a madman sane once more; a man who has given up that which made him unfit to be a father, and who isn’t being pressured to return to it, not by anyone.  It’s startling, how much looking at the girl’s face--bright and open--makes her regret what she did to them, even if it’s only for a second.  
  
Unsettled, she heads out onto the street and sees Prince Eric--no, Ron Fisher--duck into Game of Thorns for flowers for his wife Melody; and though he has no idea why it is that it’s the softer blues and greens that appeal to her the most, he goes out of his way to order them, even if they’re out of season.  Moe French serves him with the smile of a man who no longer has to worry about his daughter and Regina continues down the street and wonders if what is happening to her might actually end her.  
  
Archie is walking Pongo, and she sticks up a hand in greeting to him before wondering why, exactly, he hasn’t been paired off the way everyone else has been; why it is that Emma left him to be alone once more.  Of all the people to deserve a happy ending, she wishes one for him more than most--but as he stops to talk to David Nolan, ducking out of the pet shop, it occurs to her that perhaps he _is_ happy.  That to him, happiness is simply this _life_ , no more and no less.  
  
David also waves at her, still with the slight chill that has marked their interactions ever since she declined the privilege of being his son’s godmother--and Mary Margaret is definitely showing now, in a way that unsettles her utterly, mostly because Emma is so unconsciously fascinated by the life growing inside of her mother--but even that chill is nothing compared to the way he spent months treating her house as if it was a public space for him to invade constantly.  
  
Without a sword in  hand, the man is almost bearable.  
  
She continues down the street, eyes trained to the ground, because whatever is happening to her, it’s making her feel like she’s going to be ill, spontaneously and seriously.  The squirming in her chest is near agony, a harsh throb that permeates throughout her entire body, and she pauses on the corner of the street, seriously considering if she needs to seek out medical attention.  
  
 _Dear Dr. Whale, after years of seeing everything as black and white, I’ve suddenly discovered color_.   _What can you prescribe for that?_  
  
She sounds deranged even to herself, and so she looks at the clock tower--the clock, of course, moving constantly now, as if Emma’s heart is what powers it--and then glances across the street to the Sheriff’s Department, where a young warrior from a distant land is doing an altogether fantastic job of dealing with all the little spats that rise up in a small, tightly-knit community like this one.  
  
“Mom,” an exceedingly familiar voice calls out, and she turns on her heels to see Henry half-running, half-shuffling towards her.  Emma is behind him, the perfect vision of who she used to be; all that’s missing is the badge and the gun, because she’s even donned the absurd floppy hat that Regina left by her briefcase a few weeks ago.    
  
Henry runs towards her, after a year of only running away from her, and Emma walks behind him, hands tucked into her jacket pockets and a small smile playing around her lips, as if the moment is nice but not altogether special.  
  
“I thought you were working late because of Little Mills,” her son says, wrapping his lengthening arms around her back, and she tugs his hat further over his ears and then looks at Emma, who smiles at her faintly.  
  
The way her son lights up when he smiles is one of very few wonders of this world that has never escaped her notice, but it’s only in standing on a street corner in the latter half of February, wind whipping Emma’s hair into her eyes and making her squint in a way that’s very reminiscent of Henry when he concentrates on one of his video games, that she finds that she cannot deny that Henry’s smile comes from somewhere.  
  
When she takes a deep breath and starts to feel just a little less, it’s nothing short of a relief.  
  
“What brings you here?” she then asks, as Emma tugs on the hood to Henry’s jacket and he laughs, before stepping back.  
  
“Well--I just tendered my resignation,” Emma says, exhaling slowly and then looking at her in a way that makes Regina want to roll her eyes; whatever disapproval Emma expects, she won’t be able to supply it.  “And I thought I’d go and grab a burger with our kid before, y’know, starting the fun task of figuring out what I actually want to do with my life.”  
  
“I think Ma should be a fireman,” Henry says, shuffling out in front of them and then turning over his shoulder.  “Can girls even be firemen?  Are they firewomen then?”  
  
“Of course, Henry,” Regina says, before directing a pointed look at Emma, who seems to be seriously considering it.  “You can both be absolutely anything you want to be.”  
  
“Firewoman, definitely.  I think you’d be awesome at that, Ma,” Henry repeats, as they shuffle past the Sheriff’s Department and Emma’s head very, very slowly cranes towards the logo.  “And maybe when you’ve done your training I could ride the truck with you, with the sirens on--”  
  
“Yeah,” Emma then says, as if her thoughts are in another world altogether.  “Yeah, maybe.”  
  
…  
  
“And how would you say things are at home, now?” Archie asks.  
  
The view she has of Main Street from his office is picture perfect;  the sort of bliss she’d seen in magazines when thinking of how to build the quaint coastal town that she’d spend the next twenty eight years in.  A plow trundles along slowly, mindful of ordinances about noise levels she once instated, and a few high-school aged children dash by across the street, playing hooky altogether or rushing back for their final classes of the day.  
  
The deep reds and purples that line the window display of Game of Thorns are very much to her liking, as is the sight of Emma, across the street, nervously rubbing her hands together outside of the Sheriff’s Department and then tentatively reaching for the door.  
  
“Much better,” she says, before stepping away from the window and sitting down for her last session of therapy.


	8. Chapter 8

_Six_

_..._

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Emma says, at around eleven pm on a Tuesday in March, amid wet-lipped kisses all over Regina's neck that make her feel like she’s going to squirm right out of her skin, “that we should hold a baby shower for Mary Margaret.”  
  
They both stop moving as soon as the pronouncement is made, Emma’s hips stilling above her, she herself clenching around the toy but not shifting on it, and then Emma lifts just enough to peer at her cautiously.  
  
She was on the verge of what felt like a tremendous orgasm--it was announcing itself somewhere at the very back of her spine, prickling there and then skittering upwards and outwards like the power that she once harnessed, but purer _,_ less ripe with bloodcurdling consequence--and her first impulse is, ridiculously, to whine _why?_ , the way Henry does when they tell him that no, he cannot do something--most recently, fingerpaint the X-Men logo on his bedroom wall.  
  
The pleasure she was about to experience slinks away to a very, very distant background, and that’s before she recalls that not only is Mary Margaret Blanchard someone she never wants to think about during sex, but that the woman is, for all intents and purposes, Emma’s mother.  
  
Emma starts to chuckle, in that slow and deep way she sometimes does when she’s trying not to laugh, at the look of pure disgust that washes over her face.  
  
“You thought now would be a good time to--”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Emma says, as if there’s something obvious she’s missing.  “I mean, no, obviously, it wouldn’t be for anyone normal, but I figure I’d get you at your most relaxed--but then it seemed kind of cruel to ask you right after so …”  
  
“Cruel,” Regina repeats, and then covers her eyes with her hand.  
  
“Hey, if you just give me the yes I’m angling for, I’ll get right back to it,” Emma says, gamely.  
  
In general, it’s getting harder to remember why she ever loathed Emma; the girl isn’t anywhere near as noxiously wholesome and self-righteous as both of her parents are, and she has a wry sense of humor about herself--either version--that isn’t entirely unappealing.  Somewhere far beyond the fading anger lies some distant awareness that in years past, crossed timelines notwithstanding, they might have been friends; in the same way that she’d always found herself amused by Jefferson, watching Emma fumble through life with mixed levels of success is not at all the worst thing.  
  
Of course, right at the moments where it seems almost irrelevant how they got to this place, Emma goes and does something like _this,_ and old annoyances flare right back up.  Gentled, maybe, because she finds that she’s just generally far less likely to blow up about anything these days, but she can feel her mouth set; it only slackens again when Emma’s thumb sweeps past it, as if apologizing for this setup having been necessary.  
  
The pregnancy is something they don’t talk about, but Regina’s not oblivious to the fact that the more rounded Mary Margaret has become, the more fixated on her mother Emma has turned.  
  
She lets her hand fall away, and spares a half-glance at Emma, who teems with hereditary optimism.   “You want to do this at our house.”  
  
“Ours is the only place big enough to invite everyone, and, I don’t know.”  Something flickers through Emma’s eyes for a few seconds, her forehead wrinkling and the corners of her mouth twitching, and then she adds, “It’s what should happen.  People should have baby showers; you know, it’s just... someone should care enough to throw her one.  Her and her kid.”  
  
Sex is definitely not happening anymore, but the prickling sticks with Regina as Emma gently pulls away and then--a few unbucklings later--stretches out next to her, perched on one elbow and letting her fingers run up and down Regina’s stomach.  More to dismiss the feeling than anything else, she says,  “You had one.  In this life.”  
  
Lately, she’s found that she can say these sorts of things and Emma can cogently respond to them, but will not remember that she has done it; it’s led to a nuanced change in their relationship, as real honesty is now just a question away.  
  
“I did,” Emma confirms, her eyes growing distant and a small smile playing around her lips.  “You and Mary Margaret kind of went overboard, but then that’s how you are with things that--I don’t know.  I guess you wanted to impress; the way you’ve always hoped to impress Henry.  I wasn’t going to change my mind or anything, but--”  She shrugs, light and dismissive.  “It was really nice.  Feeling that cared for.”  
  
“What was it really like?” Regina asks, after a few more seconds of studying Emma’s detached facial expression.  
  
“What, the baby shower?  You were there, you know.”  
  
“Your actual pregnancy.”  
  
Emma’s eyes dim further, but the response is there, almost hypnotized.  “No one knew, aside from the warden and a few guards . Until I started showing.  Then they kept me away from the other women because I was so young and I don’t know, things got out of control sometimes.  I learned to hold my own but with Henry--they put me in a cell by myself and one of the guards brought me books to read.  I think I read Watership Down to him about seventeen times before--”  
  
Even now--like this, reciting from a memory that doesn’t seem quite like it’s accessible to her--Emma’s eyes fill slowly, and her mouth moves around words she doesn’t want to vocalize.  Seeing it, Regina realizes something that should have probably been obvious before--would have been obvious, had she had any reason whatsoever to think about it.  And oh, how it would have changed things; how quickly Emma Swan would have been disposed of altogether, had she known then what she knows now.  
  
“You didn’t want to give him up,” she says, watching as Emma’s hand flexes around something invisible--a pillow that isn’t there, a blanket that used to cover her, the worn spine of a book that Regina has never herself read to Henry.  
  
“No,” Emma says, before closing her eyes for a second; when she opens them again, the moment is gone, some sort of internal hold barring further questions.  “So, this baby shower thing. You don’t have to attend if you don’t want to, I guess, though--”  
  
“I wouldn’t want to accidentally  induce labor by hurting the mother-to-be’s feelings,” Regina says, on a long exhale.  “God forbid her water breaks on the rug we only _just_ got cleaned--”  
  
“Ew,” Emma says, before wrinkling her nose and laughing a little.  “That’s--yeah, okay, we’ll keep it unexciting.  Just a boring family thing.”  
  
Regina looks over sharply, but Emma’s expression is open and easy and she meant absolutely nothing by it whatsoever.  They look at each other like two people who have seen it all, and Regina thinks of what a gift Emma was made to give her; how there is very little that she can ever do that will repay said gift, not even in a world where she herself has been unnaturally gifted with the ability to make Emma happy.  
  
“From now on, how about you trust me enough to ask me unwanted questions at a normal time and don’t deprive of me what was going to be--” she finally just says, because nothing else she’s thinking would contextually make sense.  
  
The unfinished statement earns her a smirk.  “A good one?”  
  
Regina gently inclines her head, and then admits, “As these things go... a great one.”  
  
“All right.  Let’s see if we can get it back,” Emma says, and though Regina would like to say that there isn’t a chance in hell that any sort of mood can be resuscitated after this thoroughly unerotic intermission, she’s learned not to underestimate Emma in more ways than bear mention in the last few months.  
  
…  
  
The baby shower somehow doesn’t truly seem to matter.  
  
It is an event, something that will pass and she will be able to put aside without any great difficulty, as her wedding had been once. No, it's purely the mention of Emma's pregnancy that triggers a mental trap of sorts, wherein she cannot escape the past even as she tries to make the most of the present.  
  
The past is, in many ways, simple: Emma’s role in Henry’s life stop-started when he was born and recommenced at a time when he hardly needed a mother anymore.  She herself filled all the space in between--and even now, sometimes that’s glaringly obvious.  
  
Emma spills half a jug of orange juice all over the French toast first thing in the morning on a Tuesday; pulp drips from Henry’s face, and he grimaces as Emma reaches over and wipes at him with unpracticed, clumsy motions.  There is none of the authenticity of a _mother_ about her; she lacks the experience that comes with having had him in a high chair, spoon spattering mashed, bottled meals all over the kitchen floor.  It wasn’t Emma who had knelt next to him, painstakingly making what she thought would approximate airplane noises after a parenting guide she’d ordered from a catalogue had recommended those.  
  
The spillage crudely reminds her that there are vast portions of her own history that she’s rewritten, but perhaps none so thoroughly as the year-old notion that she and Henry had worked from day _one_.  
  
She’d needed to believe that, of course--more than anything, had needed Emma to believe it.  The girl was to feel inadequate and out of place, inferior in most ways that mattered.  Her one tangible link to Henry would be the phantom umbilical cord that did in fact connect them, but in every other way, she was _nothing_.  Regina had armed herself with scraped knees, loose teeth, lost shoes and memories of glasses of warm milk and nightmares, and had stared down at this half-baked scrap of a woman and thought, _never_.  
  
The reality is that for every one of Henry’s hurts that she’d managed to smooth over, there had been one that she hadn’t known how to deal with.  His emotional needs--tantrums he threw, from time to time--she’d always failed to understand; the only blueprint she’d been armed with was one of punishment, but sending him to his room when he was in one of his moods did very little to dispel them.  
  
Even without punishment, somewhere along the way he started to fear her, and to this day, she doesn’t know what it is that caused the change in him; only that it hardened her and strengthened his resolve to find out about his origins--a fleeting seed of an idea planted by Mr. Gold, who in passing had noted that he was growing up so dark, nothing like his mother.  The betrayal in Henry’s eyes at those words had given her endless nights of pacing up and down the floor behind her bed, wondering what she could do to make him forget it.  
  
Eventually, she’d asked Daniel, who had reminded her to simply _not_ do what her mother would’ve done in similar circumstances.  
  
Out of everything she did wrong, that was the one rule she never violated; not even when, for all intents and purposes, Emma Swan’s arrival turned her into her mother, vis-a-vis Henry: the less preferred parent, the fright that hovered over him and stood in the way of the unconditional love that he really wanted.  
  
No, she'd never been Cora, but neither had things between them ever been as smooth as she had wanted them to be.  As Henry flinches away from Emma’s hand--too rough with the towel, too forceful--she finds herself staring at soggy toast and a yellowing tablecloth and wanting, for possibly the first time, a second chance at all of it.  
  
She knows how to wipe his face, but in the grand scheme of things, that is the bare minimum of what he always deserved from her.  
  
…  
  
Emma is not alone in her fascination; it’s there for Henry, too, who once would have had to deal with the mind-bending reality of having a zero year old uncle, but now can just focus on _the baby_.    
  
It’s an ongoing topic of discussion between the two of them; she finds them puzzling over his math homework one afternoon, when Emma’s home early from whatever insipid training exercise Mulan has devised for her, and while they ought to be talking about fractions and percentages, what they’re instead talking about are names.  
  
“How come I don’t have a middle name?” he asks, as Regina starts unwrapping her scarf and drapes it silently over the coat rack.  “Is it because you don’t know your parents and so there isn’t anyone to name me after?”  
  
The question is so blunt it has Regina pausing, mid-tug at her glove, but Emma just chuckles and then says something about how she doesn’t have a middle name either, “and neither does your Mom”, so they just hadn’t seen the point.  
  
“Just grandpa’s name, then,” he says, sounding like he’s smiling.  “So what do you think they’ll name the baby?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know,” Emma says, exhaling audibly.  “I said they could name him Emmett if they really wanted to--”  
  
“That’s a stupid name.”  
  
“Thanks, kid.”  
  
“No, I mean, that’s what one of those vampires in Twilight is called, but not the one Alice likes.   _Emma_ is a good name.”  
  
“You think so, huh?” Emma says.  
  
“Yeah.  Miss Blanchard thinks so too.  She was telling Ruby the other day that she would’ve named the baby Emma if it was a girl and if you weren’t around but I guess she’s going to have to come up with something else, now.”  
  
That’s followed by such a stretch of silence that Regina actually holds her breath for a few moments, before deciding on assertion as her only recourse; she then swiftly breezes into the kitchen, still in her coat, seeking some sort of confirmation from Emma’s posture that Henry hasn’t just opened a sizeable can of worms.  
  
Emma, for now, simply looks like she’s considering this rather strange coincidence, and so Regina swoops down and kisses her--a sure way to short-circuit what limited processes are going on in the girl’s mind, always--until Henry makes a loud noise of disgust and says, “Come on, Moms, I’m right here.”  
  
“Aw, are you feeling left out?” Emma asks, when they separate, yanking him in close with a looped arm and planting a smacking kiss on his cheek; he laughs, shoving at her, and then says, “Mom, make her stop.”  
  
“Miss Swan; behave _,_ ” Regina says, leaning against the kitchen table and glancing at Henry’s homework.  “You can act like an eleven year old when the _actual_ eleven year old finishes those last six problems."  
  
The way Henry’s nose wrinkles suggests that he’s about to whine, and so she raises her eyebrows until he sighs and just picks up his pencil again, but even that doesn’t stop him from muttering, “I don’t see what the point of this is, my phone has a calculator app--”  
  
“I’m sure it does, kid, but what if you end up somewhere where your phone doesn’t work, huh?” Emma asks, before Regina can start her own sermon on mental acuity.  It’s an unexpected save from having to be the regimental parent, and she squeezes Emma’s shoulder in gratitude before starting to unbutton her coat.  
  
“Um, AT &T covers the entire country and I think maybe also Canada,” Henry counters.  
  
Emma has to hide a smile and then says, “Think bigger.  What if you were--somewhere totally different?  A land without... electricity.  A land where everyone still rode horses because there were no cars, and where people still hunted for their food, and where...”  
  
Henry stares at her, obviously unimpressed.  “Ma, places like that don’t exist.”  
  
“Well, that’s what you think,” Emma says, managing to imbue the statement with just enough mystery for Henry to hesitate briefly.  “Either way--if you happen to end up in one--”  
  
“How _?_ ”  
  
“I don’t know, Henry, maybe some evil Asgardians make a portal or whatever--” Emma says, obviously fighting the urge to sigh.  “All I’m saying is, it might help you to know some basic fractions when you’re trying to trade parts of a chicken for a loaf of bread, okay?”  
  
Henry still looks skeptical, but then looks back at this page.  “I think this is five eighths.  And I think a chicken is worth a lot more than a bread is so that would be a really bad trade, Ma.”  
  
He’s not wrong, about either comment.  Regina shrugs out of her coat, exchanging a silently amused look with Emma, who ruffles his hair and says, “Well, I better keep you if we ever return to a barter economy, huh?”  
  
She’s back in the hallway, hanging up her coat, when Henry says, “I think they’re going to name the baby Leo.”  
  
“Leo?” Emma asks, and Regina closes her eyes briefly and feels her nostrils flare with how hard she inhales.  “Like the star sign?”  
  
“No, like Miss Blanchard’s dad.  That’s what Mr. Nolan made it sound like, when he watched me last Friday--we were um, having a light saber fight and then he said that I was named after my grandpa, and how did I feel about that.”  A pencil scratches on paper, dimly, and then Henry continues, “I said it was pretty cool, not as cool as being named Hawkeye but I guess that because you and Mom are both girls you probably just didn’t know that that would be a great name.”  
  
Emma laughs, as does Regina--utterly despite herself--and then says, “Try that again.  You’re almost there--remember to carry the two.”  
  
“I think maybe you can start calling me Hawkeye anyway.  It’s like how Wendy just wants to be called Darling now, like she’s Rihanna.”  
  
“I’ll tell you what, you ace your next math test and I’ll call you Hawkeye for a week,” Emma pledges.  
  
Regina catches sight of herself in the hallway mirror and actually takes a step back at the expression on her face.  It’s uncomplicated, but also utterly unfamiliar, the way that everything dark about her recedes these days; and what she’s left with is a stranger with her features.  She looks in the mirror and sees someone capable of living in this house, with these people, without sabotaging every spare moment purely out of habit.  
  
Running a few fingers through her hair, she heads back to the kitchen and watches as Henry completes his last few problems, before peering up at her and asking, “How’s Little Mills?”  
  
Pregnancy is everywhere, but new life no longer makes her want to destroy the way it once did, and so she sits down across from him and answers every single one of his questions without hesitation.  
  
…  
  
They’re working their way through His Dark Materials and she knows that her son is growing up fast when the story, only at points laced with action, fails to bore him; when after half an hour of reading, she yawns, he takes The Golden Compass from her hands and starts reading instead, his cheek against her shoulder as she’s barefoot on his bed.  It won’t be long now until he outgrows her--Emma will remain taller, but only for a short while, and suddenly it’s very hard to conceive of him as a child altogether.  
  
He figures out that she’s no longer paying attention after two more pages and sticks a finger in the book before letting it close, looking at her with a tentative, “Mom?  You okay?”  
  
She nods, and then kisses the top of his head--while she can still reach it--and says, “You’re just growing up very fast; it feels like only yesterday that I had to read to you, you know.”  
  
“Do you wish I was still that small?”  
  
She manages a tight smile; it’s such a loaded question, but not for reasons he could ever understand.  “Sometimes.  Not often, but sometimes I do.”  
  
Henry examines her closely, legs shifting on the bed, and then he carefully says, “Miss Blanchard is younger than you are, but she’s older than Ma, right?”  
  
Unwillingly, she narrows her eyes at him, but then tentatively nods anyway.  
  
“And Alice says that anyone under the age of forty can pretty much have a baby.  If they do--the process, you know, with the man and the woman,” Henry says, before staring at his duvet for a second.  “I don’t really know how that would work with you two but Alice says that you could do it without Dad.  But I think if you asked him nicely--”  
  
Regina feels her mouth slowly fall open, her lips barely parted, but she knows that Henry’s caught her when he falls silent, lip bit in the same way that Emma does it when she’s desperately trying to gauge Regina’s reaction and doesn’t want to ruin anything by saying more.  
  
“Henry, dear, what are you saying?” she finally asks him, when her mind doesn’t produce anything more cogent than that.  
  
“That--if you two want another baby, I think that’d be great and you’re not too old.”  
  
He looks so simultaneously pleased with himself and hopeful that for the first time, Regina actually sees both herself and Emma in his expression at the same time, and it’s what stops her from telling him to not be ridiculous.  What he’s saying _isn’t_ actually all that ridiculous; he’s right.  She and Emma are both still at appropriate ages to have children--Emma more so than she is, but only slightly--and they’re in a happy, committed relationship that can be easily legalized.  What’s more, they truly love the one child they already have together, so why not have another?    
  
They’re ready for children, in this world.  Ready in a way Emma hadn’t been before--and looking at Henry’s worried face, she wonders to what extent he’s aware of that, even now--and that will ensure a full, rich family life for any further offspring.  
  
On paper, there is so very little stopping them, but her heart grinds to a halt in her chest at the idea of bringing another child into this lie; a child that will be either hers or Emma’s, but not _theirs,_ the way Henry is.  
  
She contemplates another bundle of Charming, this one with blond ringlets like Emma herself must have had, and feels nothing but dread at the idea of bringing it into this dishonest existence; both at the idea of loving it, and at being incapable of it altogether.  
  
Henry’s hand lands on her cheek and she starts at it, looking at him with eyes that cannot hide the abrupt terror that’s washed over her, and it’s mirrored in his face after a moment.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, almost a whisper, even though he’s clearly unsure of what he should be sorry about.  “I thought--”  
  
“No, Henry, it’s--it’s fine.  Your mother and I simply have never discussed it.  All of our focus has been on you, you see.  You’re our whole world,” she says, and in saying it, feels it for the truth it is all over again.  
  
Everything they’ve done, they’ve done for Henry.  Not for an abstract family; no, it has purely been for him, and outside of him, there simply isn’t enough to bring them together.  
  
A slightly awkward look of embarrassment passes over his face at her candor, and then he deliberately lifts the book again and says, “Um, do you want to read more, or--”  
  
“Not tonight, dear,” she says, offering him some sort of smile.  “Tomorrow, okay?”  
  
He nods in the low light of his glow-in-the-dark fish, and lowers the book to her hands, where she takes a firm hold of it and puts it away.  
  
…  
  
Kathryn gamely takes an afternoon off from her limited campaign efforts--she doesn’t need much more than the plain fact that she’s not Albert Spencer, and Regina finds she feels both smug in how justified she was in her choice of Emma’s replacement and vaguely bitter that Kathryn will outperform her in a role she invented for herself--and joins them at The Rabbit Hole for a discussion of how to organize a child-friendly, unexciting baby shower.  
  
They’re already on their third drink--one necessitated by Kathryn’s soft, “It’s really nice of you to do this, and thanks for--well, for not assuming that I wouldn’t be able to handle it”, the next by everything else to do with this baby shower--by the time Emma shows up, the overhead lighting catching sharply on the little star pinned on her collar.  
  
“Congratulations, dear,” Regina says, half-lifting to kiss her in greeting; their mouths come together awkwardly, but that current that sometimes runs between them is there all the same.  She’s started associating it with _sincerity;_ an emotion so long absent from her life that it took her almost four months to associate it with these moments, when kissing Emma feels vaguely like being electrocuted.  
  
“Thanks,” Emma says, hat askew on her head; her fingers stray to the safety on her gun before she straddles a chair backwards and then smiles brightly at Kathryn.  “Hey, you--thanks for saving me, again, and for coming.  If you ever need a hand from the SSD, I’m completely your girl.”  
  
Kathryn is slightly tipsy and even more indulgent than she normally is, and with a hand on Emma’s forearm, solemnly says, “Don’t mention it.  Especially not when I turn out to be a terrible mayor.”  
  
Emma laughs and then glances at the notepad of suggestions, leaning forward to study it carefully.  After a few seconds, she says, “Well, I was going to suggest a stripper, but I guess that’s more a bachelorette party thing.  Might still be worth it, though, just for the look on Mary Margaret’s face.”  
  
Regina is abruptly reminded of how different this world is by how Kathryn just chuckles before sucking more drink up through her bendy straw; in the life Regina had trapped her in before, any mention of Mary Margaret would be greeted with the mildest of hesitation, a niggling awareness in Kathryn that something about the woman was a threat to the life she had--regardless of whether it was the life she wanted.    
  
Here, Abigail has her knight and Mary Margaret is no more than a vague colleague; the mayor and the principal, each benevolently reigning over their respective kingdoms.  The other royals--Eric, at the country club; Thomas, the fire department--have their own realms to guard, in Emma’s restructuring of the political spectrum; even Regina has a land of her own to govern in the stables.  Truly, the only royal without something to rule is Aurora, but after the damage the girl caused in the last world on account of her eager willingness to believe the best in people, it’s probably not an oversight on Emma’s part.  
  
“Is there something like, pin the tail on the baby?” Emma asks, reaching for Regina’s martini and sloshing it around briefly before taking a sip.  “Or like a pinata or something?  A baby you hit with a stick?”  
  
“Honestly, my experience with these things is that it’s just women daintily getting drunk, talking about how much labor is going to hurt, extolling the merits of breast-feeding and cooing over rattles,” Kathryn says, so plainly that it surprises Regina into laughter.  “Except yours, Emma, but then you were so young and I think nobody wanted to frighten you.”  
  
“I just remember Granny telling me to have an epidural while waving a knife at me,” Emma says, and the memory crystallizes in Regina’s mind as well; the hare-like, panicked look on Emma’s face, hands shielding her very present belly, as Granny had cornered her and urged her to do the smart thing.  
  
“Sound advice,” she says, and when she looks at Emma, they seemingly both recall Henry’s false birth; Mary Margaret standing by the head of the bed like some over-devoted baseball coach, urging Emma to bat a homerun while Emma had been wailing about how much she hated all of them and was never doing this again, until--  
  
She blinks, and then looks at the tips of her own fingers.  
  
Emma had quieted down when they’d held hands, briefly, as she’d grown tired of the girl screeching over a completely natural process that even utter imbeciles managed to get through in one piece; she’d reached for Emma’s hand and had told her--in the same flat way she’d said everything, after Daniel had died and before Henry had been born--to calm the hell down and show some character, and something had bloomed between their fingers even then, shutting Emma up abruptly and giving her renewed determination to get through the ordeal.  
  
Emma’s fingers touch her own in the present and another one of those potent zaps takes place, and for the first time, she wonders if she’s alone in feeling them; but Emma’s eyes lock onto hers with enough force for her to know at once that Emma definitely _feels_ the magic between them, but simply lacks the frame of reference to call it that.  
  
To Emma, it’s probably just a manifestation of their love.  
  
At that thought, Regina drains the rest of her drink and then looks at the list in front of them again, absently wondering if there is enough of Snow left in this version of Mary Margaret for her own knowledge of what a young princess had once wanted to be relevant--but then that version of Snow, one who had loved all things pretty and all things nice, was one she’d banished long before either of them ever started playing around with Rumpelstiltskin’s life-altering magic.  
  
She taps a nail on the list, and then says, “We could combine most of the activities we have listed here into … some sort of skills-based treasure hunt.”  
  
“Um, she’s eight months pregnant; do you really think--” Emma says, looking at her curiously.  
  
“Nothing extravagant; it’s March in Maine, I’m hardly thinking she should go traipse around the forest and look under the Toll Bridge for clues,” Regina says, narrowing her eyes.  “Your--best friend has, however, always liked a challenge.  So let’s make her work for her gifts.”  
  
Kathryn smiles, glass held at an angle that threatens to spill what remains of it.  “I like it.  Why not do something different?”  
  
Emma still looks skeptical, and after a second Regina just sighs.  “Or we could sit and engage in pointless small talk about pregnancy that will make you as uncomfortable as it makes her; another repetition of the same conversation she’s had ten million times over the last few months, and will only serve to make her more anxious about a process that will happen with or without her consent.”  
  
After a second, Emma smiles faintly.  “Sometimes, I forget that you know her better than any of us--David aside, I mean.”  
  
Regina gets up from her seat with her empty glass and says, “It’s easy to forget, dear.  Does anyone else need a refill?”  
  
…  
  
Their memories of Henry’s life are a complete conflation of true and false, now.  
  
Regina remembers holding him scant minutes after he was born, a squealing, filth-covered mess, bright red in the face and with a little askew tuft of hair as black as his grandmother’s.  Emma remembers going home with him a day later, pacing the floor of Regina’s nursery--which they’d decorated together--with Heny’s head cradled to her shoulder until his crying had simmered down.  Regina remembers cutting an umbilical cord, and they both remember Regina walking in on Emma breastfeeding more than once, Emma stammering an apology and Regina just covering her eyes and backing out of the room blindly.  
  
Those are the images that whirl in her mind as they get ready for bed later that day, having already tucked Henry in; she’s applying a few dots of nighttime cream to her face, and Emma is brushing out her hair with even, regular strokes.  She doesn’t ever make it to a hundred, but then she doesn’t seem to need to; her hair springs with barely restrained energy after just a few passes of the brush, the way that Regina’s skin seemingly tightens after just the thinnest layer of moisturizing agent is applied to it.  
  
Emma hums something softly under her breath, and Regina thinks of ten years of moments with Henry that Emma simply wasn’t there for.  
  
Emma had only seconds to construct a life for them, up in the clock tower, and so it seems undeniable that the memories she’s filled their heads with are fantasies she’s harbored for a long time in reality.  That isn’t a sentiment Regina wants to dwell on, but much as all the colors in the world seem more vivid than they have in decades, there are some cracks in her being that she simply cannot plaster over anymore.  
  
“Our son wants us to have more children,” she says, because she cannot bear the sight of her own face, fraught and exposed as it currently looks.  She glances over at where Emma is now brushing her teeth, foam dripping from between her lips; the picture of elegance, as ever.  
  
“Yeah?” Emma asks, after spitting and wiping the rest of the foam off her lips.  Whatever she’s thinking is for once inscrutable; she’s an open book so much of the time that Regina finds herself put out by this abrupt opaqueness.  
  
“We have his blessing, in any event.  He seems to think that--”  She twists her lips for a few seconds, and then decides that there’s no point in dancing around a subject that, if breached, will simply be forgotten about again.  “Well.  Mary Margaret’s pregnancy has made him believe that we’d both like to raise another baby.”  
  
“Do we?” Emma asks, and Regina smiles unwillingly at the subtle shrewdness of her pass back.  
  
“It would make me happy to hear your thoughts first, dear.”  
  
Emma runs the tap for a few seconds, sticking her toothbrush under it, and then ducks her head to take a sip of water, rinsing thoroughly and then splashing her face.  She’s already reaching for a pad and the make-up remover by the time she says, “I can’t say I haven’t been thinking about it.”  
  
“In the sense that...”  
  
“In the sense that--this time, I wouldn’t have to miss anything,” Emma says, so plainly that it’s almost as if she doesn’t realize how terrible a thing that is to have to admit.  Regina knows she looks stricken even before Emma catches her eyes, and then almost apologetically says, “Oh, Regina--come on.  It’s not your fault, you know that.”  
  
“Of course it isn’t,” Regina agrees, a little sharper than she means to.  
  
Emma lowers the pad, streaked black with make-up.  “It just--it would be nice, to actually experience it all.  The first minutes, but also all the ones that follow.  First words, first steps, … all that cliche crap that seems like it doesn’t mean anything at all until it’s about your own kid.  I know you documented all of it so I saw video of the stuff I missed when I was in Boston, but--”  
  
Guilt is the most loathsome of all of the things she has barely felt in the last thirty years, and its resurgence now is utterly unwanted; she tamps down on it, and instead says, “What are you saying?”  
  
“That I’ve thought about it and I’m in, if you are.”  Emma tosses the pad in the trash and then steps into the bedroom again, pausing right next to the vanity.  “So.  Are you?”  
  
Regina wants to laugh, because it’s utterly unclear who she’s even having this conversation with, and after a second she says, “You say this because of the circumstances we live in now.”  
  
“Of course,” Emma says, crossing her arms loosely in front of her chest as she gazes out towards the tips of the apple tree, shadows of leaves drawn into relief by the moonlight.  
  
“Would you have wanted to have another child in our last reality?”  
  
Emma says nothing for a long while, and then says, “I wanted Henry, but no, I didn’t want another one.  Not the way things were.  Not with my life the way it was.  And, I think it goes without saying, definitely not with you.”  
  
Regina smiles despite herself.  “But if I told you I wanted to here--”  
  
“Of course.  If it makes you happy,” Emma says, but there’s something sardonic about the way she says it; an edge that was lacking before.  “There wasn’t enough time to make it--better than that.  You have to know that.  I don’t know how you ever did it the first time around, I had seconds and--I guess I gave everyone what I could.  It’s not enough, though, is it?”  
  
An honest answer could destroy everything, but lies have done nothing but age her, cripple her from the inside out.  “It’s enough for _him_.  Let’s just focus on that.”  
  
Emma exhales abruptly, and then repeats, “So.  Are you?”  
  
“No, dear.  I think--one child is all we were meant to have, together,” Regina says, the words gentle in a way that she doesn’t mean for them to be, but that seems to smooth over the tension on Emma’s face all the same.  
  
Emma plants her foot flat on the wall and then rubs her hands together briefly.  “Yeah, you’re probably right.  I mean, what are the odds of winning the lottery like we did with Henry a second time?  We’d probably have some nightmarishly bratty kid, a real spoiled princess.”  
  
Regina sighs softly.  “Yes.  Probably.”  
  
…  
  
The house is lined with inauthentic family photography.    
  
Regina’s managed to wander the halls for months now without really dwelling on the array of Henry’s school photos--less formal, less posed, more happy this time--or the shots from their wedding, Emma accidentally nailing Ruby in the face with a bouquet of flowers before doubling over with laughter, or them dotingly looking at each other as rings are exchanged.    
  
Then there are the shots of the three of them; Henry on Emma’s shoulders, yanking on her wild mass of hair as Regina has her hand slipped through Emma’s arm, or Henry on her lap as Emma hovers over them and glances at a video game or a book.  Moments that could have been; moments that _have_ been, in fact, in the last few months.    
  
She finds herself looking at the photography that lines the foyer for the first time the day before Mary Margaret’s baby shower, as presents are being wrapped by Emma in the living room and Henry is scouring the yard and the house for good hiding places or good places to set up challenges.  Emma had raised her eyebrows spectacularly at the notion that Mary Margaret would enjoy some sort of archery-oriented target practice quest, but Henry had been so enthused by the idea that she’d gone along with setting it up anyway.  
  
It’ll be an interesting day for all of them, Regina thinks, fingertips trailing along Henry’s cheek in a picture where he’s proudly displaying all of the teeth he’s already lost in a little jar, a gap-toothed smile underneath freckled, tanned cheeks and too-long bangs that suggest that he’s had a great summer vacation and nobody bothered him with reminders of his station or his obligations for months on end.  
  
She lets her hand fall away and wonders if the unsettled feeling that courses through her body every time she’s faced with the disingenuity of this world will ever dissipate.  It seems as though she is both stuck in this life and with a simmering desire to confront Emma with what Henry’s life had actually been like--to put her own stamp back on Henry’s life, removing some of the gloss that Emma has added.  
  
The most abhorrent part in everything that roils through her is that it’s not _purely_ spiteful or territorial; no, a lot of it is in fact awfully benign.   _I wouldn’t have to miss out on anything this time,_ so simple a statement and so terrible a sentiment.  
  
She closes her eyes briefly and then heads back to the living room; moving on has never been her forte, but Archie has put her on a path that she cannot seem to divert from.  No, all she can do is try to set free those things that haunt the spaces around her heart.  
  
“Dear, where are all of Henry’s old baby things?” she asks, glancing at Emma’s struggles with a scotch tape dispenser and fighting the urge to roll her eyes.  
  
“We donated them all--everything he outgrew went to the nuns so that some orphaned kid somewhere could have some good quality stuff, y’know?”  
  
The pangs are almost constant these days, but Regina manages a miniscule smile and says, “His actual baby things.  The ones I bought for him, before.”  
  
It’s hard to imagine Emma erasing any part of Henry, and so it's unsurprising that she simply says, “Those are locked away in the attic, of course.  I never go there.  But you have a key in your nightstand.”  
  
 _Of course,_  Regina thinks, and then absently brushes some hair off Emma’s forehead, until Emma glances up at her with a tentative smile.   “Were you thinking of giving Mary Margaret his old bassinet or playpen or something?”  
  
“Or something,” she says, before heading up the stairs.  
  
...  
  
The door to the attic space has always been locked--she’d always worried that Henry would make himself a home there, the way she’d hid out in the stables, and that kind of detachment wasn’t part of her fantasies about raising him--but the key in the door turns smoothly when she applies just a smidgen of pressure, as if it’s been recently WD-40ed and has been waiting for her to do just this.  Dust litters the steps, and her heels leave prick-pins of imprints as she climbs upwards, ducking her head underneath the slowly swinging bare bulb that lights the way, until she reaches the top and can see where Emma has very neatly laid their old lives to rest.  
  
A crib, a bassinet, and his old playpen are all there, dismantled and lined against the walls; as are all the old children’s books that she used to read to him.  Not a fairytale in sight, there; it had in fact been illegal to purchase any rendition of certain tales for decades in Storybrooke, until the ship had sunk all at once with the arrival of Gold’s biography of their various lives.  No, she’d read to him fables from ancient Greece, and later--far later--the Redwall series, sympathizing with the cats even as Henry rooted for the rats with all of his little being.  
  
There are boxes full of his old clothes; a sled she’d once painstakingly tried to put together herself, as any parent would have done, before finally summoning Graham to her house and ordering him to do it.  Rolls of wallpaper--racing cars, themes from baseball, _average American boy_ pictures that she’d had no associations with--are at the far back, sagging with damp in the corners but otherwise fully serviceable.    
  
And, of course, the photo albums.  
  
Photographs had been one of the various miracles of this world that defied her understanding.  She could create and destroy with the flick of a finger, and had spent many years of her life talking to a mirror without a second thought, but none in all the realms that she’d terrorized had ever thought of so simply inventing a method of documentation.  Drawings had been all the rage back in the Forest; drawings and paintings, requiring subjects to sit stiffly with pointed chins and blank expressions for weeks on end.  Even now, her vertebrae ache at memories of required family portraits, her father’s hand on her right shoulder balancing out the digging pressure of her mother’s nails on her left.    
  
Henry had been a squirming bundle of misery, those first few weeks, and the idea of him sitting still long enough for any sort of artwork had been inconceivable--but those tiny plastic boxes that the humans on earth had invented to compensate for the unwillingness of children to stay put had been a solution so obvious that she’d bought two disposable cameras at once.  One, she used to snap every expression she could gather from Henry’s scrunched up, frequently bawling face--and the other, she dug apart with a pair of pliers and studied from every angle.  
  
No magic--but such magic, all the same.  
  
She remembers heading to the pharmacy to get the pictures developed by the dwarf that worked there, remembers wandering the aisles of the store and purchasing at least fifteen different infant vitamins that Henry definitely required, and then most of all remembers getting the yellow flap-folded envelope that contained her prints.  
  
Even in the depths of her own despair, she’d never lost sight of _excitement,_ and it had enveloped her completely as she had held the first of an infinite number of pictures of her son.  
  
She picks up the first of many albums, blowing the dust off it, and then spots a single unmarked box next to them; the lid is perched on it awkwardly, as if slammed down in a rush, and as she lifts the nearest corner, she finds a white blanket with a purple ribbon sewn into the edge of it.  
  
Emma may hide it better, but they are equally terrible at letting go, it seems.  
  
…  
  
  
“You’re not in any of these,” Emma says.  
  
It’s the first thing she’s said in nearly half an hour, after gingerly sitting down next to Regina on the couch and being handed a photo album with a soft reminder of what it contained; the true story, the history Emma had been deprived of in full, the truth that has not informed Emma’s own inventions regarding his life.  
  
Emma had simply taken the album, letting it sit on her knees for a few long seconds, before opening it with such reverence that Regina had stopped holding her breath, just for a short while.  
  
“I took the pictures, didn’t I?” she says, now.  
  
“Yeah, but--this is the third album.  You’re not in any of these pictures.  Cameras come with timers, you know?  You could’ve gotten into the shot.”  
  
It’s strange, how it doesn’t occur to her that it’s true until she watches Emma turn page after page and only sees Henry.  
  
…  
  
The first picture of them together, she finds when he’s seven, and he no longer looks as if he’s the single most content boy in the world.  
  
Emma runs a fingernail down his cheek--a scrap of a movement, he’s still that small--and then says, “Something’s changed, here.”  
  
“I can’t remember,” Regina says, which she wishes were true.  
  
Emma digs out the last album, the one where he’s six and still looks at the camera with a certain fondness and desire for approval; where there’s at the very least still a hint of a smile playing around his face, and puts that picture next to the one of both of them, stiffly posing next to the Christmas tree.  
  
Regina sees her hand on his left shoulder, and has to fight an overwhelming urge to slam the album shut.  
  
The next picture of Henry with a genuine smile on his face is barely a year old; it was taken by Mary Margaret and he and Emma are eating ice cream together out by that decrepit castle on the beach, and there’s a dot of soft-serve on the tip of his nose and Emma is laughing to the point where she nearly fumbles her own cone.  
  
It’s one of the things that she was most glad to see gone from his bedroom, following her abrupt arrival in this reality, but now--  
  
Emma closes the book and then reaches for her hand carefully, as if still cognizant of who they really are, and Regina supposes that this is what she gets for pushing Emma; the good and the bad of before.  
  
“Thank you for showing me these.  I could’ve never asked,” Emma says, low and serious.  
  
Regina shrugs, and then looks at the clock with a sigh, taking the album from Emma’s hand and tucking it under her arm.  “I better start dinner.  You should check that Henry hasn’t hidden anything up a tree.”  
  
“You did right by him, you know.  You were exactly what I hoped he would have, if he couldn’t have me,” Emma says, as she’s already on her feet again and heading for the door.  “I know who and what you are, but it doesn’t matter; not when it comes to him.”  
  
Regina freezes in the doorway and then turns to look at Emma over her shoulder; she’s neatly stacking all the albums again, oblivious to being watched and to what she's just said, and after a second Regina says, “Emma.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“You would have done right by him, too.”  
  
The slightly disbelieving look on Emma’s face when their eyes meet is abruptly excruciating, but then Emma just smiles, crookedly, and says, “Yeah, maybe.”  
  
…  
  
She lingers in the background, given that this is an event that shouldn’t involve her.    
  
Some part of her wonders if she’s gone soft and is doing this out of consideration for Snow, but the rest of her realizes that it’s merely to keep the peace.  For Emma’s sake, not her mother’s.  
  
Lavish amounts of presents are extended, and she finds herself in the kitchen with David, who is on constant stand-by these days.  
  
“The doctor said she might go into labor early.  Something about--um,” he says, before blushing furiously and just reaching for a dish towel and twisting it in his hands.  “Well, it’s biological.”  
  
Regina thinks of the day she cast a curse, and wonders what would’ve happened if Snow had actually carried to term; wonders if her son would have ever been born to a version of Emma that had been loved unconditionally by her mother, all these years.  
  
“Thanks for doing this, by the way,” David adds, after a few seconds.  “I know that you hate these kinds of home invasions--”  
  
“It’s fine,” Regina says, and they both watch through the window as Mary Margaret hesitantly picks up a practice bow in the yard and twists it around in her hand for a few hapless seconds, before something dawns in  her eyes and her grip shifts as if the past is directly guiding her.  
  
Regina scoffs softly, and then pours herself and David a well-earned glass of wine before watching as Mary Margaret readies her shot.  
  
The futility of these kinds of spells and curses, how they cannot ever truly rewrite what lies at the heart of people, is almost amusing these days; and as David whistles softly and leans forward, bracing himself on the sink and peering as Mary Margaret shoots an arrow straight through the first target disk before motioning for Emma to hand over her prize, it’s almost easy to forget that she hates them both in ways that once defined her.  
  
When Emma raises an eyebrow at her, and then cocks a thumb at Mary Margaret before making some sort of disbelieving face, she smiles and then holds out her glass to David.  
  
“To surprisingly fine marksmanship.”  
  
“Uh--yeah, you bet,” he says, and clumsily clangs their glasses together.  
  
…  
  
“Oh, hey,” Emma says, bending down by the coffee table and surfacing with one final wrapped package.  “She forgot one.  I thought we lined them all up for the treasure hunt?  Which, by the way, was a great idea--remind me to never doubt you again.”  
  
Regina looks up from where she’s curled up in a chair by the fire, stitching a button back onto  Henry’s favorite shirt, and then says, “It’s not for Mary Margaret.”  
  
“Oh,” Emma says, and like a child whose birthdays were forever a non-event, looks at the present with a mixture of trepidation and cautious hope.  “For Henry?”  
  
“Open it,” Regina just says, tying off the thread when the button feels firm again and then snipping it quickly with a pair of sewing scissors.  
  
Emma’s blunted nails slowly peel away the scotch tape holding the paper together, and then carefully extract the book from the wrapping paper.  Incomprehension mars her face for a moment, but then forceful and complete awareness settles in her eyes, and she looks at Regina as if she’s been struck.

“It’s a first edition,” Regina says, putting the shirt aside and getting to her feet.  “I don’t believe he’s ever even seen the movie, let alone read the book.  Not in this world or the last--”  
  
“I didn’t want to--” Emma says, before shaking her head and looking at the book again, mouth crumpling briefly before she helplessly addresses Regina once more.  “Why?”  
  
“For him,” Regina says, simply.  
  
Emma swallows thickly, and then after a second says, “Bullshit.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“I said _bullshit_ ; he’s not missing anything.  He never knew about this; I’ve never told him.  The only people who know--”  
  
Regina sighs forcefully.  “Fine.  Turn a molehill into a mountain, Deputy.  It’s good to know that you haven’t completely left behind your most irritating qualities--though I’d truly expect you to be more comfortable with gestures of charity--”  
  
“Shut up,” Emma says, her fingers whitening around the book.  “What is this, really?”  
  
Regina knows that old hostilities are awakening, mostly because of the way that Emma is staring at her now--impudent, recalcitrant, a formidable nemesis--but things between them can never ignite as they once did.  Too much has changed, and so after a second she straightens and says, “A dose of reality.”  
  
“Yeah, I remember all that thoughtful gift-giving you and I engaged in in the real world,” Emma bristles, taking another step forward.  “You would’ve never--”  
  
“Yes, well, we weren’t wedded before, dear.  Surely you’re not actually upset that I’m acting out the part you’ve cast me in?”  
  
Emma stares at her so intently that it actually takes some effort not to start squirming.  
  
“ _What_?” Regina finally snaps, and the word is out before Emma is on her; they stumble backwards towards the fireplace, landing against it at an awkward angle.  The back of the mantle is digging into Regina’s spine right below her bra, but she can barely feel the pain because when Emma kisses her, something between them that has sparked for a while now, like black and white wires hotly touching each other, just explodes.  
  
She feels all the hair on her body rise, feels Emma cling to her with unexpected force, feels the way that Emma’s teeth unapologetically dig into her lip, feels the demanding sweep of her tongue and the way her nostrils flare, feels absolutely _everything_ as if she’s being confronted with the very molecules that make her and Emma up, molecules that are singing as if she still has the power to control matter that way.  
  
She feels _Emma,_ and knows that Emma feels her when the girl lets out a truly desperate, lost groan as their kiss slows and deepens, the book tumbling to the ground next to them.  
  
The air around them is almost too thick to inhale, and when she thinks her lungs are about to burst, Emma gives her just enough space to breathe, their noses still touching and Emma’s eyes pinning her in place, her breath coming out in rushed pants against Regina’s lips.  
  
“Magic,” Emma says, in the moment, and Regina nods, unable to stop staring back as Emma’s chest slowly stops heaving.  “Shit, Regina, this--” and she trails a finger down Regina’s cheek, and the atoms there light up, burn from the outside in as if she’s been cut, “--is magic.”  
  
“It’s you,” Regina says, so haggardly that it cannot be misconstrued as a statement of romance; it’s fact, pure fact.  “It’s in you.  You’re--everything about you is like this.  I have no idea how to stop it.”  
  
She doesn’t have to add how enticing it is, how irresistible.  Emma seems to understand that much naturally and kisses her again; all of Regina’s nerve endings immediately buzz with voltage, and the smallest of suckles on her lip makes her eyes roll back in her head.  
  
“God,” she exhales, when it seems that Emma is going to force her to feel everything all at once.  
  
“No,” Emma says, and then freezes abruptly, staring at her intently.  “You need to be careful.”  
  
“Of what?” Regina asks, bracing her hands against Emma’s shoulders.  “Isn’t this how it is meant to work; am I not supposed to accept this life--”  
  
“Yeah, _this_ life, not--I never thought--” Emma says, before shaking her head and pressing her palm right on top of Regina’s heart, which beats as if it never stopped knowing how, these days; as if there wasn’t ever anything missing from it.  It beats hard and white hot with Emma’s hand there, covering it.  “Remember why we did this.  Remember _what_ we did and why we have to stick with it.  If you don’t, we’re completely fucked, Regina.  Okay?”  
  
“Okay,” she says, feeling both faint and curiously high.  “I’ll remember.”  
  
Emma studies her seriousness, and then kisses her again in a way that makes her feel as if all of her that’s old is being devoured, turned inside out--but truthfully, there isn’t anything left for Emma to consume at this point.  For all the times she’s died, this is the first time she feels as if she’s been reborn, and the notion burns bright in her--as bright as the magic within Emma, which strings an endless current between them.  
  
“You have to,” Emma urges her again, on a sucked-in breath, and Regina shushes her, finds that she doesn’t want to hear more of how or why remembering matters so much; it’s utterly irrelevant when she’ll remember regardless.  
  
Forgetting is not something she has ever been blessed with, after all.


	9. Chapter 9

_an ending_

_…_

_Try to remain positive as you look forward to the end of your pregnancy.  
_ The Mayo Clinic

...

 _I am only thirty.  
_ _And like the cat I have nine times to die._

 _This is Number Three.  
_ Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”

…

 _Dirty enough, I got me a love_  
 _And it’s so bad_  
Matthew Good Band, “Hello Time Bomb”

…

 _I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;  
_ _I lift my lids and all is born again.  
_ _(I think I made you up inside my head.)_  
Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song”

…

 _If you leave, leave what you are_  
The Joy Formidable, “Llaw = Wall”


	10. Chapter 10

_Seven_  
  
…  
  
She ends up having to give the book to Emma a second time; a mutual orgasm right up against the fireplace that actually has her checking Emma for a pulse wipes the unpredictable slate of Emma’s mind clean all over again.  Cathartic as their coming together was for Regina--and it was, she feels years younger and so much more aware all at once--it was something else entirely for Emma, whose eyes flutter open very slowly, before she rubs at her mouth as if checking for drool.  
  
“Welcome back,” Regina says, as Emma’s pupils dilate and then narrow again, seemingly unseeing.  
  
After a few seconds, Emma sags against her and says, “I’ll give you a twenty right now if you promise that you’re not going to be ridiculously smug about this.”  
  
Regina laughs, head pressed back against the cold marble as Emma’s head settles below her chin.  “I’m not Henry, dear.  Nice try, however.”  
  
The wattage of Emma’s ever-present power is down to a trickle at this point; she feels it where they touch, but it’s almost a pleasant afterthought--nothing like the tidal wave that had them rutting in an open-doored room, right in view of the staircase no less.  The minute she thinks she can stand again, Regina plans on making a few pointed comments about that; but for now, she just closes her eyes and lets Emma’s magic tingle along her skin.  
  
“What’s this?” Emma asks, and as Regina forces her eyes open again, she sees Emma toeing the book with a still-socked foot.  
  
“What’s--” she starts to say, and then just sighs, arm slackening where it’s more or less holding Emma upright.  “Oh.  A gift, for you to read to Henry.”  
  
“Cool,” Emma says, and Regina has to fight a sigh.  “Sick of reading to him, huh?”  
  
“Not hardly; it’s one of my favorite things to do with him, and now it can be one of yours,” she says, which is so close to the truth in all worlds that she stiffens without meaning to.  
  
Whatever else Emma’s magic does, it de-filters them both in ways that she’s incredibly uncomfortable with--but there’s no fighting it.  Not here, not when Emma has virtually all the cards and at best, she’s figured out how to shuffle them a little.  
  
Emma says nothing for a few seconds, and then lifts up and presses a kiss to her cheek; platonic and warm, and somehow incredibly real.  “Thanks.  That’s actually really sweet.”  
  
“Yes, well.  I have my moments,” Regina says, not even a little surprised when Emma just laughs in response and makes an incredibly non-committal noise.  
  
…  
  
A few days later, she’s sorting the laundry and spends a few seconds looking at an odd, vaguely crusty stain on one of Henry’s socks before abruptly dropping it in front of the washing machine in horror.  Eventually--after a few long minutes of purging the sight from her mind and then blindly tossing the sock into the washing machine itself--she forces herself to adopt an air of calm and heads towards the kitchen, where Henry is doing his homework.  
  
He looks so sweet and innocent that she wants to believe that this was simply some sort of accident, but then remembers Emma’s raised eyebrows at last month’s water bill, and at that, she hovers in the door frame, staring at a boy who--by the measure of their own land, at least--is on the verge of exiting boyhood altogether.  
  
“Hey, Mom,” he still says, in a voice that hasn’t dropped yet; there are no signs that he’ll need to start shaving soon, either, and she tries to think of what the internet has told her about any of these developments before realizing that she never read that far.  
  
Any time they had together past his tenth year would have been borrowed, and she’d known it, even if she hadn’t wanted to know it.  
  
She manages a smile at him.  “Have you seen my phone, Henry?”  
  
“Nope, but I can call it if you want me to,” he offers.  
  
“That’s all right; I’m sure it’s simply upstairs,” she says, letting her hands ball into fists just to dispel any urge she has to go over there and hold him to her chest, run fingers through his hair, make him small again.  
  
Having another child will not undo this, but what she wouldn’t give for a curse that could wind back time right now.  
  
“Okay,” he says, already bending over an English essay that Alice will help him with later tonight.  She watches him for a few more seconds--not long enough that it can be deemed worrying--and then drags herself up the stairs, where she unpockets her phone and calls her wife.  
  
“What’s up?” Emma says, sounding out of breath.  
  
“Are you chasing a criminal?”  
  
“No, an escaped dog,” Emma says, and Regina rolls her eyes hard enough for it to hurt.  
  
“Well, this is more important.”  
  
“What is it?” Emma says; there’s a scraping noise in the background that suggests she just came to an abrupt halt.  
  
Regina pinches her nose and then blurts out, “You need to talk to our son about not masturbating in his footwear anymore.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Emma says, sounding abruptly ill.  “What?”  
  
“I was doing laundry--”  
  
“He jerked off in one of his _shoes_?”  
  
“For God’s sake, Emma, he’s not an animal.  He did it in a sock, obviously, but I’d still rather he just do it in the bathroom--”  
  
“Oh, man, that’s why the water bill was huge last month,” Emma sighs.  
  
“Yes.  I guess we should be relieved that we didn’t spring a leak anywhere--”  
  
“No, you and I are definitely not, uh, springing anything,” Emma says, sounding like she’s smothering nervous laughter.  
  
Regina feels her teeth clench together.  “You think this is funny _,_ do you?”  
  
“I’d rather not turn it into this huge thing.  He doesn’t have to end up all screwed up about sex the way you did--”  
  
“I beg your pardon,” Regina says, icily.  “As you should know better than most, I have completely normal attitudes towards sex--”  
  
“Oh, yeah.  You definitely never tried to convince Ruby that dry-humping would turn her blind or anything--”  
  
Regina closes her eyes and rubs at her forehead.  “Do I look like a nun to you, dear?”  
  
Emma chuckles after a moment.  “You’re right.  That was Mother Superior.  Damn, that woman had moments of being terrifying.”  
  
“Anyway,” Regina says, forcefully.  “Maybe you can stop by the library and find him some literature--”  
  
“How about I just tell him to choke the chicken in the shower from now on--”  Emma starts to say, before cutting herself off abruptly.  “Wait, why am _I_ doing this?”  
  
“Equal division of parental duties.”  
  
“Right, and you’re dealing with the other thing as mortifying as this conversation, which is--”  
  
“I’ll deal with the dangers of intercourse when the time comes,” Regina says, wondering if she’s being manipulated or if this is actually a fair trade of responsibility.  As an afterthought, she adds,  “Concern about teen pregnancy might sound more sincere coming from me, after all.”  
  
She hears Emma swallow, and there’s something odd about her voice when she says, “Fine.  I’ll talk to him when I get home.”  
  
“Thank--” Regina says, but it’s to the dial tone, not to her wife.  
  
…  
  
“Emma, you’re being ridiculous.  You know I didn’t mean anything--”  
  
“Save it.  I’m really--you know what?  I’m not in a position to tell you to not be a bitch about it, because you saved my ass after I did something really stupid--you saved Henry’s ass, too, and I guess I should’ve just been on my knees thanking my lucky stars all these years now.  Thanks for not rubbing it in sooner, babe.  Really.”  
  
The bedroom door slams shut and she’s left with half the covers on the bed, an empty side, two missing pillows.  Though stripped, this is the exact bed she slept in for twenty eight years, and she picks at the fitted sheet with short fingernails and wonders when it started looking so unbearably vast and empty to her.  
  
…  
  
It’s impossible to tell which version of Emma is upset with her.  Both would be entitled, she supposes, and either way breakfast is a tense affair, kept civil primarily because Henry heads to school early to pick up Miles and Ava so they can work on their group presentation for World Studies some more.  Michael honks at barely seven and their son is out the door, backpack still too large on his shoulders.  
  
Emma at that point nearly beats her hard-boiled egg to a pulp with a spoon and Regina takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry.”  
  
It earns her a glance, but not much more than that, which is infuriating.  
  
“What more do you want me to say, exactly?  Yes, I said something I shouldn’t have.  It’s hardly the first time, and it will most definitely not be the last.  This is who I _am_ \--”  
  
“Is it?  Because I really don’t think I would’ve given Henry to you if that’s what I thought; I _really_ don’t think I ever would’ve let you seduce me, and we definitely wouldn’t fucking be married if I actually thought that--”  
  
She’s up from the table before she can stop herself, and then bites out, “I refuse to have this conversation with someone who should know exactly what I’m capable of but has chosen to forget about it because her fantasy life is more convenient that way.”  
  
“What is thatsupposed to mean?” Emma says, and while her eyes are alight, it’s not with the clarity that Regina has come to depend on.  
  
Pushing has always worked, and she has no reason to think it won’t now, and so with a sneer she adds, “I mean that this is on you.  You’re the one who signed up for a happy ending with--well, how did your parents put it, before they banished me?  A vicious, remorseless killer.  So forgive me, if I find it hard to accept that we’re actually having this discussion about the fact that I said something snide toyou yesterday.  Let’s face it, Miss Swan--of all the things you should want me to take back, the fact that I made light of your awareness of contraception is--”  
  
Emma stares at her plate blankly for a few seconds, and she forces herself to stop; to give the situation another pass over, and then just picks up her empty mug of coffee and carries it to the sink.  The world outside remains as white as Emma’s magic, but it’s flecked with spots of darkness where the snow is starting to melt.    
  
“If you want to apologize for the rest of it, I’m not stopping you,” Emma says, behind her.  
  
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong.  If I start apologizing to you, I’ll spend the rest of my life doing it,” Regina says, bracing her arms against the counter.  “Dante would be delighted by your conception of heaven, dear.  I could say I’m sorry until my tongue blistered, and a second later, you wouldn’t remember what I was sorry for.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
“Am I what?”  
  
“Sorry,” Emma says, and Regina curses herself when she realizes that, on some level, she craves the certainty of peace that comes with being touched by Emma these days.  She’d thought magic addictive before, but only truly feels _real_ now when Emma is right there.  They’re endlessly tied together, she and the false girl, and so there is no escaping this conversation.  
  
“Had you had... a normal life, you would’ve never had Henry,” she says, turning back around.  
  
Emma smiles thinly, before buttering some toast and then carefully putting her knife down again.  “Had my mother never told yours about Daniel, you wouldn’t have had him either.  How far back, exactly, do you want to take this?”  
  
Regina sags against the kitchen counter and stares at her wedding rings; exactly to her taste, even if chosen accidentally by someone who had, at the time, hardly known her.  She sighs.  “I’ve never believed that children should be made to pay for who their parents are.  It fell to yours to keep you removed from the conflict I had with your mother, just as it falls to me to--”  After a second, she shakes her head, because it’s not that simple.  “What I mean to say is that you’re right.  I am sorry; sorry that… neither you nor Henry could ever hope to live out normal lives.”  
  
“You’re only about half responsible for what I was born into,” Emma says, tilting back in her chair in a way that, during the charade, Regina would get her to stop doing; it doesn’t seem to matter so much now.  “And honestly, I find what you did easier to understand.  You can’t help that you were--” Emma pauses and then laughs, despairingly.  “You know, the world I grew up in would’ve recognized you for what you were.”  
  
Regina smiles thinly.  “My own kingdom had little difficulty declaring me irredeemable, dear.  Granted, the electric chair adds a certain flair to the death penalty that execution by arrow lacked sorely--”  
  
“I mean that you would’ve gotten the help you needed here, _”_ Emma amends.  “With your mother, with everything else that wasn’t right in your head.  Someone would’ve helped you, long before you completely lost control.  It’s--you know, I’m glad Henry was born here.  That other world is--I don’t know.  Maybe I’m off worse in a lot of ways, but at least here I have the freedom to fuck up my own life.  There, it’s all destiny and prophecy and inherited rule.  I don’t know how you ever did it, and I guess I’m sorry too.”  
  
“For _what_?” Regina says, unable to hide the disbelief in her voice.  
  
“I’m not the only one who got a shitty deck of cards right at the start of the game,” Emma says, and then calmly takes a sip of her orange juice.  “So how about you just say you’re sorry for being an ass yesterday, like you mean it, and we can go back to living the kind of life that luckier people get, huh?”  
  
There is so very little she can say in times like these, when all she wants to do is shake Emma and tell her to not go away again; that for all the ways in which Emma can stick her head in the sand, she never can, and sometimes, it feels worse to be forgotten about than it ever did to be remembered.  
  
It’s impossible to find redemption in a lie of this magnitude, but that’s on her as much as it is on Emma.  Fifty percent responsible for each other’s misery; _my God, it’s almost like an actual marriage_ , she thinks, and then steps away from the counter.  
  
“I am sorry,” she says, and lets her fingers curl around Emma’s shoulder.  “You deserved better.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Emma says, already mollified and back to sleep by the time her fingers fold over Regina’s, delivering a small, rewarding dose of narcotics simply through touch.  “There, that wasn’t too hard, was it?”  
  
Whole lives are contained in the answers she cannot give to that question.  
  
…  
  
The call comes at three thirty seven in the morning, and Regina groans as Emma sleepily says, “Right now?  No, okay, David, we’ll be right--yeah, of course.  Uh--”, because of course Snow White would deliver a child at the most inconvenient time imaginable all over again.  
  
Granted, this is a step up from minutes before the apocalypse, but Regina’s body still struggles to react when Emma jostles her arm and says, “Hey, we have to go.  Can you go wake up Henry?”  
  
“I truly don’t understand why we have to attend the birth--”  
  
Emma snaps, “Yes, you goddamned well do” and Regina is so taken aback by it that she stays silent as Emma flings her legs overboard and then heads to the bathroom with clipped little steps.  
  
The spell is no longer what it was at the start, impermeable and dense and incomprehensible.  All the little parts of it that should’ve remained a mystery to Regina forever more are starting to make a horrible kind of sense, and if it is weakening, that suggests that something that either she or Emma is doing is going to result in an eventual end of their lives here.  
  
She stares at the bathroom door for a few seconds, and then gets out of bed, fishing her robe off the floor--a habit in laxity that has somehow just snuck in, with the passage of time--and heads over to Henry’s bedroom.  Even though a rather subdued Emma assured her a few days ago that they would have no more ‘laundry incidents’, she knocks loudly before reaching for the doorknob.  The days of simply entering his room are simply gone.  
  
“Henry, dear, it’s time--Snow--” she says, unthinkingly, and then closes her eyes.  “Miss Blanchard is about to have her baby.  Get dressed and we’ll go to the hospital.”  
  
A muffled, sleepy, “Okay” sounds from the bed; her son has definitely inherited his mother’s early-morning non-functioning, but she knows that with a second knock five minutes from now, he’ll be upright and dressed in no time.  
  
Emma is out of the bathroom when she returns to their bedroom, looking through a drawer of long-sleeved shirts and then glancing at her.  “What do you think is birth-appropriate?”  
  
“I wouldn’t dress up; we could be there for a long time.”  
  
“Okay,” Emma says, still sounding frazzled, and after a second, Regina just steps in behind her and rubs at her neck; it’s pacifying, an accidental discovery mid-sex that she’s applied at other times since then, and after a few moments, Emma visibly relaxes.  “Thanks.  That’s better.”  
  
“You don’t have to do the hard work today.  It’s primarily going to be sitting and waiting--”  
  
“For you, maybe.  She asked me to, uh--be there,” Emma says, and then shrugs a little awkwardly.  “I didn’t know how to say no.  She did it for me, so I kind of owe her one.  And David’s a good guy, but not the greatest when it comes to girl stuff, so maybe she actually needs me.”  
  
At three forty five in the morning, Regina has neither the will nor the energy to scoff at that idea, and instead just says, “I’m sure she does.  Wear comfortable shoes, in that case.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Emma agrees, catching her eye for just a second in the mirror over the dresser.  “Are you going to be okay?  Spending all day in the hospital, I mean--I know it’s not your favorite place.”  
  
Regina smiles after a second, and then just shrugs, before holding out a black, v-neck shirt for Emma’s still-searching hands.  “I’ve lived through worse.  Wear that.”  
  
…  
  
It’s an odd sort of family affair.  
  
The absence of the dwarves aside, it’s akin to being at a more intimate version of Snow and Charming’s wedding.  This time, she’s not even crashing the event; Killian simply sticks up a hand in greeting and Ruby stops pacing the corridor, shoulders hunched as if she’s trying not to transform.  Granny is knitting a blanket next to one of the nuns--Regina can’t remember what each of the fairies are called, but it’s not Blue--and Sean and Ashley are rocking baby Alexandra to sleep a few chairs over.   
  
“I brought booze,” Killian tells them, as they move to sit down next to him; he adds, “Not for you, obviously, young sir” for Henry’s sake, and Regina rolls her eyes before settling on an uncomfortable plastic chair.  
  
Emma runs a hand through Henry’s hair and says, “I’ll give you guys updates, okay?  Where--”  
  
“Down the hall, there’s a nurse at the reception there who will take you in,” Killian says, before pointing at where Ruby is pacing.  Emma nods, and with one final look at Regina--one that seems almost pleading, but for what, Regina has no idea--starts to walk away from them again.  
  
“So--are they going to cut the baby out of Miss Blanchard?  With a huge knife, or--are they going to _saw_ her open like she’s a magician’s assistant?” Henry wants to know, leaning forward to look at Killian, as if he’s the resident expert on all things labor.  
  
Between her son and Killian, the wait may actually be vaguely entertaining.  
  
…  
  
The first update comes from Charming; Regina ignores his news regarding Mary Margaret’s spirits, and merely does the mental math on her dilation, to see how much longer this may take, as if it were happening to someone else entirely.  
  
David unpockets his magnetic Tic Tac Toe and leaves it with Henry, and she and Killian each play a few rounds with him before his eyes shutter again and he curls up in his chair, tucked against her arm as he catches some more much-needed sleep.  
  
He only wakes when, an hour later, Emma comes by for the next update, counting facts off her fingers with a grimace, before just concluding, “She’s getting there but it’s slow--there’s not a lot happening and uh, well, they’re doing another ultrasound right now to make sure that the baby is--”  
  
“The baby is at risk?” Ruby asks, head whipping around as if craning towards the moon.  
  
“No, no,” Emma says, holding up her hands in apology.  “They’re both fine, they just want to make sure the baby isn’t getting distressed or anything.  I mean, wouldn’t you be, if you were--well, I don’t know.”  
  
After taking a few sips of Regina’s cooling Americano, Emma disappears again, feet covered in blue wrap-around slippers and hands smelling of disinfectant hand gel.  As she leaves Henry yawns widely and then his stomach growls, and so they head off to the downstairs cafeteria for a light breakfast; Killian spikes his coffee with enough whiskey for Regina’s nostrils to burn, and then says, “Jesus, I’m so glad that isn’t me up there.”  
  
“I don’t think you ever have to worry about that, dear--”  
  
“No, I don’t mean _her_.  I mean him.  Helplessly standing around like an idiot.”  Killian actually shudders, and then shakes his head, taking a measured sip of his laced coffee.  “And this is the easiest part of it.  I don’t know how any of you do it, the whole parenting thing.”  
  
“It’s easier than it looks,” Regina says, as Henry slurps up some of the chocolate milk he talked her into buying, saying Emma would’ve definitely let him have some because it’s a special day.  “Sometimes, anyway.”  
  
Killian looks at her skeptically and then offers her his canteen, and after a second, she takes a sip as well; not least of all because he’s right.  The birth is the easiest part; how they’ll all adjust to this baby that they’ve forgotten they’re related to is a wholly separate matter, and not one she wants to dwell on without Emma present.  
  
…  
  
The third update comes after three hours, and Emma looks wan and distracted when she starts out with, “Uh--so, there’s been some sort of complication--”  
  
Everyone starts talking at once, until Regina gets to her feet and says, “Enough”, with the kind of force she hasn’t used in almost an entire year now; the force that brings whole populations to their knees.  Her former subjects capitulate to her will even now, and Emma gives her a grateful little look before running a hand weakly through her hair.  
  
“She’s not--the hole isn’t big enough, basically, and the baby is starting to have difficulty breathing.  There’s also something with the cord, so--uh.  They’re taking her upstairs now and--I think it’s going to be an emergency c-section, that that’s what they’ve recommended.  But the doctors all say that those are still pretty routine so--”  
  
“They are,” Regina says, because there is no point in having an entire waiting room full of panicking people for another few hours as Snow White goes through major surgery.  
  
It’s curious to think what would have happened to her in the other realm; magic did many things, but compensate for science, it couldn’t.  Not always.  Snow White might have perished in labor; the baby might have, too.  A thank-you card certainly won’t be in the mail for her any time soon, but she feels an odd sensation at the idea that perhaps, the scales are slightly more balanced now that they find themselves abruptly reliant on modern medicine she brought to them.  
  
“I need--I don’t know.  I should go back to David,” Emma says, directly to Regina, and after a second she looks at Killian over her shoulder, who just nods.  
  
“I’ll walk you,” she says, taking Emma by the arm and guiding her back through the double doors at the end of the corridor, until Emma shakes her head and says, “No--they’re on a different floor, the ORs are on--”  
  
“Two,” Regina says, and Emma nods, not questioning her knowledge.  
  
When they’ve called the elevator, Emma’s eyes grow unfocused, and Regina reaches for her cheek, ready to slap it if there’s a need, but there isn’t; Emma stares back at her and then says, “She could die.”  
  
Regina hesitates, and in that hesitation, Emma’s disjointed unsettlement blooms fully into knowing panic.  
  
“She could die today and I--she has no idea how much I care about her.  She has--why didn’t I tell her before this happened, why didn’t I take the time to just--”  Tears spring into Emma’s eyes abruptly.  “She doesn’t know, and now there is no way that I can tell her--”  
  
“Stop,” Regina says, quietly, reaching for Emma’s upper arms.  “Take a deep breath, and listen to me.”  
  
“I’m not going to be _calm_ about this,” Emma protests, even as she also obeys and sucks some needed air into her lungs; her cheeks pink again, a second later, and Regina reaches up with one hand and brushes some stray hair off her forehead.  “You know who that is in there.”  
  
“I do, and it’s because of who she is that you will be calm, Emma.  Because she’ll need you to be, and your father will need you to be as well.  If you think you are distraught, imagine how he feels.  This isn’t how the fairy tale is supposed to end, is it?  They’ve vanquished the evil queen, and they’ve found each other again, and this is meant to be a celebration of their love.”  
  
She brushes at Emma’s cheeks when tears streak down, muddied with mascara, and then tilts her head slightly.  
  
“And as for your relationship to her...  You are as close as you have ever been, now; the fact that she’s your biological mother--well, it shouldn’t surprise you that I think biology is exceptionally overrated,” she adds.  
  
Emma laughs, a wet sort of collapse, and then wipes at her own eyes.  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”  
  
“Family is what you make, as well as what you get, dear.  You have always made her your family, and vice versa.  So--clean your face, and be a shoulder that James can lean on.  Undoubtedly, it’ll be a more comfortable fit than having him try to parent you.”  
  
She can both feel and see Emma swallow, and after a few seconds, Emma says, “She’ll get through this, won’t she?”  
  
“I have no doubt that she will,” Regina says, and then lets Emma pull her into a hug; it’s one that simmers with magic, a kind of bittersweet tranquilizer that lets them both simply breathe for a few moments.  “Your mother experienced a fall from a life of sheer luxury to one of absolute destitution and reinvented herself to survive, so I very much doubt that a natural process that even _you_ somehow got through in one piece will be the thing to finally slay her.”  
  
Emma fists hands into the back of her jacket, pulling it taut, and then blindly seeks her mouth, kissing her for reasons that Regina can’t really discern, even as her lips start to tingle and her pulse starts to thrum harder.  
  
“You’re right.  If anything, I know you’d never let a baby accomplish what you couldn’t for all these years,” Emma then says, with levity she clearly doesn’t feel, after pulling away and wiping some stray lipstick off the corner of Regina’s mouth.  
  
Regina wants to agree, but finds that her heart simply isn’t in it anymore; that even the eye-roll she wants to offer in response to the cheap shot isn’t forthcoming, and that however much she doubts she’ll ever stop resenting Snow, her death has been heavily devalued by Henry’s attachment to her.  
  
Henry’s attachment, and--  
  
The elevator’s chime, somewhere behind them, stops her from responding altogether; she watches as Emma straightens and squares her shoulders and then looks at her one more time.  
  
“Thank you,” she says, in a last moment of utter reality between them; and then, Regina lets her hand fall away, pulsing softly with the last strings of Emma’s magic as Emma strides off to save whatever needs saving now.  
  
…  
  
Seeing the baby boy is a relief, not a surprise.  
  
Emma shoulders her way through the double doors, David following after her with his charge in his arms, eyes fixated on the baby; it’s only through Emma’s steering that he even makes it to the waiting area, and then he seems too overcome to speak.  
  
“It’s--well, this is Leo,” Emma finally says, for him, her hand straying to the bottom of the blanket that the infant is tightly wrapped in.    
  
Unlike Henry, young Leo doesn’t seem to want to enter into this world with lungs bursting; but then Leo Nolan will never have anything to wail about.  
  
She feels Henry shift next to her; Ruby carefully asks after Mary Margaret, and David looks at her in surprise, before laughing sheepishly.  
  
“Oh, geez, I’m so sorry.  She’s fine--she’s asleep, and she will be for a while, but I think she’s earned the right given that she made... well.”  He looks back at his son, shaking his head in disbelief, and then murmurs something that sounds like, “After all this time...”  
  
Regina involuntarily looks at Emma, but Emma has pushed herself away from this; can see this child as her best friend’s greatest wish, one she’s granted so very generously.  
  
“Can I see him?” Henry asks, timidly, and Regina stills as David moves towards them, kneeling down with the baby in his arms.  It’s impossible to not see a flash of the last time he cradled a baby; an image she replayed in her mind over and over, following him through a castle that had once been hers, watching his aimless struggles against something that would catch up with him regardless.    
  
That baby is now almost thirty years old and standing by his shoulder, watching as her own son tentatively reaches for the heir to the kingdom.  
  
“He’s so small,” Henry finally asks, and then looks to Regina.  “Was I this small?”  
  
She nods, even though she’s not sure; babies grow so fast, and she’d not had him in these days--so when Emma says, “Yeah, kid.  You were--I couldn’t really believe you were real”, it feels like an overarching truth.  
  
“Do you want to hold him?” David offers, seemingly sincere, even though Regina cannot imagine a circumstance under which James or Snow would ever let this baby out of their sight.  
  
Henry hesitates, and then says, “Um, Mom, can you show me how to do it?  I don’t want to drop Leo.”  
  
Killian feels very far away from her indeed, as she sits there, surrounded by three generations of the White tree.  It’s an unfathomable set of circumstances, but David hands her his child--willingly, so very willingly that it makes her almost nauseous--and she looks at a face that already reminds her of Henry as well as his mother, even with eyes scrunched tight and head nearly bald, aside from a few stray strands of gold that peek out of the blanket wrap.  
  
“He has your nose,” she says, without thinking, and David says, “I know”, even though she meant the words for Emma and Henry.  
  
The baby is still, content and at ease in her arms, and she can feel them start to shake before she turns to Henry.  “You’ll want to support--his back, and his head.  Low on his back--”  
  
“Like his butt?” Henry asks, and David and Emma chuckle in an exhausted, fond way.  
  
“Yes, right around there,” Regina says, watching as he mimics her own arm positioning; when he says, “Okay, I think I’m ready”, she slowly passes the baby into his arms, marveling at how much larger the child immediately seems, being held by someone else still so little, sometimes.  
  
Looking at Henry, who very carefully holds baby Leo to his chest, she forgets whose child this is; she can only see an addition to her own family, a younger sibling for Henry, who will benefit from his devoted love for his or her entire life.  Emma steps in closer to her and puts a hand on her back, and she swallows against a rush of tears as Henry says, “Hello, Leo.  I’m--well, I guess you can call me your Uncle Henry, because your mom and my mom are almost like sisters even though they’re not really related--”  
  
Emma shifts, out of her line of vision, and she reaches backwards blindly, hand wrapping around a thigh.  It’s unclear if any of this is as jarring for Emma as it unexpectedly is for her, but she doesn’t want to take any chances; not while Henry is holding his uncle, and not while David kneels before her without a care in the world, and not while Emma can look upon this child and smile.  
  
After a few moments, Henry has had enough of holding the quiet, unmoving baby, and then peers up at Emma.  “Do you want him, Ma?”  
  
“Sure, why not,” Emma says, and Regina leans back as the baby is carefully transferred again, before appearing just as awkwardly in Emma’s arms as he had in Henry’s.  Emma actually smiles after a second, and then says, “You asked the right person for guidance, kid--I didn’t do nearly as much baby-holding as your mom did.”  
  
David gets to his feet again and ruffles Henry’s hair, before saying, “Emma, I’m going to go to the recovery room; Mary Margaret shouldn’t be alone when she wakes up.  Can you--”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll take him back to the nursery soon,” Emma says, her fingers probing at the edge of the blanket, right where it meets Leo’s chin.  She falls silent after that, and Regina watches as a host of shadows pass by behind her eyes--but they never quite breach the surface.  No, all that happens is that she looks at her younger brother, who has opened his eyes and is curiously looking back, with eyes that are still dark and faintly sightless but will inevitably end up an ever-changing shade of green.  
  
Ruby appears at Emma’s side, and coos at the baby briefly, and with her come the rest of the guests in waiting, Killian aside.  Emma seems to have no intention of surrendering the child to anyone, however, and Regina glances over at Henry when it becomes obvious that even the most powerful of spells cannot suppress certain losses.  
  
He looks back at her, and then gravely says, “I’m glad you and Ma don’t want any more kids.  I didn’t know that having a baby could _kill_ you, but it’s totally not worth it, in that case.”  
  
After a second she laughs quietly, and puts a hand on his back.  “One day, darling, you’ll have a child of your own, and you’ll understand that they are absolutely worth dying for.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe,” Henry says, a small grimace playing around his mouth--as if he cannot think of anything more disgusting than loving something so selflessly.  
  
Distantly, she remembers feeling the same once, and presses a kiss to the top of his head.  
  
…  
  
Snow has never looked more like the princess from the fairy tale of this world; even when cursed asleep, she’d retained a glimmer of color in her apple cheeks, but now, there is none of it left, save the bright red of lips that appear bit-through.  
  
The birth must have been agonizing in a way that both James and Emma underplayed, and Regina finds herself studying the wan face in front of her.  
  
A whole life spent wanting to see it suffer, and now that it has, she finds that there isn’t anything in that suffering that alleviates what lingers of her own pain.  
  
Emma settles on the side of the bed and reaches for Snow’s hand, squeezing it tightly.  “You scared the crap out of us today, lady.”  
  
Snow manages something approximating a smile, but closes her eyes before she answers.  “I’m sorry.  I’ll try to get my reproductive system to be more cooperative next time.”  
  
There is something about the way that James’ face falls that suggests that there will be no next time, but Snow is too out of it to gather as much; Regina startles at the fact that she actually feels relief at the notion that that conversation will wait for a different time, and steadies herself by grabbing the railing at the edge of Snow’s bed, right next to her hospital charts.  
  
“Well, it was touch and go, but I figure that means you’ve made a pretty perfect kid.  After all, Henry didn’t come out easy either, and--”  Emma hesitates, as if she wants to say something else, but then just shakes her head; unprompted by Regina, the remainder of the thought is inaccessible.  “How are you feeling?”  
  
“Rough,” Snow says, with the kind of fortitude that Regina wanted to quash for so long.  Even in physical defeat, there is no getting Snow White down.  “Like a gutted fish.”  
  
“You’ll be fine,” James says, from the other side of the bed, and they exchange a look that has Emma turning to look over her shoulder, the eye-roll mostly implicit.  
  
“The doctors want to keep you here a few more days, I think, but then you’re good to go,” Emma adds, when the dopey staring continues for a few more moments and even this version of Emma seems to want to run right out of the room.  
  
“Okay,” Snow says, with a soft sigh, before finally spotting Regina at the foot of the bed.  “Regina.  You came,” she then murmurs.  
  
Regina arches an eyebrow, and then forces herself to say, “Of course I did, dear.”  
  
“Yeah,” Snow says, and as an IV drips drugs somewhere behind James, the slightest of frowns forms between her eyes.  “I had a dream once, about you being here when--I think I wanted you here.  Back when--”  
  
Her eyes slip shut before she can finish a statement that will mean nothing to anyone else present in the room, but it nonetheless has Regina staring at her face for long moments after Emma has already shifted off the bed and is offering David their guest bedroom for the night.    
  
An entire conversation takes place around her, as she looks at the once-more unconscious form of her once-stepdaughter, and can’t help but think about the extent to which children are responsible for what their parents do in _any_ world.  
  
She only manages to let go of the bed when Emma’s hand reaches for her own and tangles their fingers together, with a soft, “Let’s go home.”  
  
“Home,” Regina echoes, and then glances over at Emma.  
  
The girl smiles in a way that seems knowing on all levels; like she both knows what has actually happened in the last twenty nine hours, and what those hours have done to the last twenty nine years.  She smiles in a way that seems altogether too kind, too forgiving, and Regina glances away from it, but all that happens is that Emma’s fingers tighten around hers, as if nothing could get them to let go.  
  
…  
  
They should both be tired enough to sleep, but instead they end up lying next to each other as resting vampires, both staring up at the ceiling.  
  
“If you were to ever have a mental conversation with someone you wanted advice from, who would it be?” Regina asks, when it’s clear that the red lights on the alarm clock are simply going to keep on changing, but neither of them will actually get any sleep.  
  
“My parents.”  Emma shifts, and then adds, “If I needed input on anything practical I usually talked it out with my dad, like--how to kick ass in a fist fight, or how to change a tire on the Bug.  But anything else, my mom.”  
  
Regina stays silent for a few more seconds, and then says, “You mean--the parents you imagined for yourself.”  
  
“Yeah,” Emma says, or sighs, and then pulls up her knees, tenting the covers.  “What about you?”  
  
“What do you think,” Regina says, and it’s with a sort of wry self-awareness that makes them both laugh after a moment.  It’s slightly pained laughter, but it’s there, all the same.  
  
“Even now?” Emma asks, and Regina sees the reflection of the numbers on the alarm clock--eight four two zero--cast like blood on the ceiling, blinking in and out of existence.  
  
“No,” she then admits.  “I don’t know how to talk to him anymore, even if I thought he could help with the finer aspects of our predicament.  I don’t, however.”  
  
“You talk to me, instead.  Like this,” Emma says, more than asks.  
  
“Yes; you’ve made yourself my problem and my solution in one.  It’s very clever, actually.  I wouldn’t have thought you capable of this level of ingenuity, but for a rank amateur, you built a significant set of failsafes into a very unpredictable spell.”  
  
Emma stays silent for a long moment, and after a while of feeling uncomfortably alone even with company, Regina turns to look at her.  
  
“It’s what you learn when you live on the road.  Always have an exit strategy or a back-up plan.  I figured you’d start fucking around with perfection sooner rather than later--”  
  
Regina snorts softly, and after a second Emma looks back at her.  
  
“You’re not what I expected you to be,” she then says.  “None of this actually ended up how I wanted it to, but you’re the most surprising part of it by far.”  
  
“That’s mutual, I assure you,” Regina says, and somehow it feels like a far weightier confession than it has any right to be.  
  
They continue assessing each other silently, and to her own surprise, she gives in first; there aren’t many staring contests she’s lost in any of her lifetimes, but it has been forever and a day since she’s felt quite this exposed.  
  
“I’m aware of the back-up plans.  I assume I’m actually living them by now--” she says, waiting for Emma’s nod to continue, “But what’s the exit strategy, dear?”  
  
There’s something almost sad about Emma’s smile when she says, “I think you know.”  
  
“If I did, I wouldn’t bother--”  
  
Emma reaches across the mattress and touches her wrist, and she almost jolts off the bed.  
  
“Your magic.  Of course,” Regina sighs, rubbing at her wrist absently, before reaching for Emma’s fingertips; a more comfortable dosage.  A second later, the sensation fades altogether, and she looks at Emma in surprise.  
  
“I can control it when I know what it _is_ ,” Emma says, and then looks at her own fingertips.  “I think, anyway.  Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m only aware that I’m doing it about five percent of the time, so--”  
  
“Can I ask you something?” Regina asks, as Emma twists her wrist around, fingertips dappled in the red light streaking across the room.  
  
“I’ll do you one better; you can ask me whatever you like, and I can’t actually not answer you,” Emma says, poking at her cheek with her tongue.  “Didn’t think that one through too well, did I.”  
  
Regina smiles faintly.  “I’ve yet to take advantage, as far as I’m aware.”  
  
That just earns her a look, and Emma eventually says, “Go ahead.”  
  
“Why me?”  
  
“Jesus, let me get just go and get my tiny violin--” Emma says, and Regina rolls her eyes.  
  
“I meant, how is it possible for the spell to have resulted in you sharing your life with me?  Surely you didn’t wish eternal misery for yourself?”  
  
Emma lowers her hand to the blanket and then just says, “No, I mean, not that I’m aware.  I didn’t really--I don’t know.  I definitely didn’t have like… repressed feelings for you, if that’s what you’re asking.  You’re hot, but I hated your guts until not too long ago--”  
  
Regina feels laughter bubble up in her chest and then says, “I just--cannot fathom how on earth we ended up like this.  I probably would’ve wished you dead, you know, had I been able.”  
  
Emma half-smiles, in a way that’s infuriatingly attractive.  “You’re so full of shit.  You had ample chances to kill me and even then, the worst you managed was to try to inflict one of those dream comas on me.”  
  
“Ah, so _I’m_ the one with the repressed feelings,” Regina says, tonelessly.  “Thank you for clarifying, Miss Swan.  Such insight.”  
  
“Are you even into women?” Emma asks, before laughing and saying, “Well, nevermind.  Even if you weren’t before, nobody can fake what you and I do together these days.”  
  
There’s no point in denying it, and after a few moments Regina just asks, “Do you regret what we’ve done?”  
  
“No,” Emma says, without any real hesitation.  “And not just because I actually can’t, since this spell is part of me, or I’m part of this spell.  I don’t regret it because we did the only thing we were left with.  It was this or death for so many of us.”  
  
“That simple, hm?” Regina asks.  
  
“It’s true.  It’s not simple, but that doesn’t matter when it’s true.  Just like… I don’t think I had enough reasons to make sure you stayed alive before, but I definitely have them now.  And that’s … well, that’s really not simple, at all, but that doesn’t make it less true.”  
  
Regina feels her heartbeat pause, very abruptly, and as it kicks off again, carefully says, “Thank you, I think.  I’m not entirely sure what that means--”  
  
“I know.  If you were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Emma says, and then sighs softly.  “I better actually try to get some rest.  I have an exciting day of parking tickets ahead of me tomorrow and--it’s exhausting, you know.  Being aware of everything about this spell all at once makes me feel like my brain is going to just drip right out of my nose one of these days.”  
  
“You don’t say,” Regina murmurs, and then watches as Emma quite deliberately closes her eyes, before rolling onto her side--arm immediately slid under Regina’s pillow--and stretching out across nearly half the bed.  
  
It’s very entitled, and once upon a time, Regina knows that it would’ve kept her up for exactly as long as Emma would’ve slept, but like so many other things, that simply isn’t true anymore.  No, she just shifts further down the bed, until she can curl up low on her own pillow; and her mind only settles when Emma shifts in closer and molds their bodies together.  
  
Even Emma’s barely-audible, “Love you”, right up against the nape of her neck, no longer feels out of place in their marital bed, and so she simply closes her eyes, enveloped in magic as somnolent as the softest lullabies she’s ever sung to Henry.


	11. Chapter 11

_Eight_  
  
…  
  
The world thaws, lightening into pastels that suit neither her nor Emma; the red leather jacket stands out sharply in a world that is all shades of Mary Margaret Blanchard, and Regina orders a cream variant that will work better for this milder season.  
  
Blossoms will start to appear on the apple tree in no time at all, and she spends significant time in the mornings with a mug of coffee out back by the kitchen door, watching as time manifests itself visibly all over again.  
  
In the mirror, the first of what will be many crow’s feet appear next to her eyes; Emma spots it a few days after she does and touches it with careful, soft fingertips.  “I might need to start calling you my sugar momma soon,” she notes, and Regina says, “There are more fun ways of exercising a death wish, dear.”  
  
Death, however, simply doesn’t seem like it fits this world at all, and as March drifts into April and  April drifts into May, all she feels is that she’s done trying to hold on to years that simply aren’t going to let themselves be kept.  
  
…  
  
Passive as he may have been in the hospital, little Leo spends most of the spring compensating for his quiet entry into the world by being impossible to put to bed.  Streaks of gray miraculously appear in James’ hair, and Snow falls asleep in the middle of the weekly lunches they have at the Nolans’ house more than once; those lunches a way to avoid Emma’s latent longing for her family from manifesting itself too powerfully, while also respecting that Regina simply cannot take much more of her in-laws than this.  
  
There is a great irony in the fact that the only thing that seems to quiet the baby is Regina rocking him back and forth.  There’s nothing special about what she does; she’s shown the exact motion to every single of Leo’s biological relatives, but where it is void of power in them, the effect of her doing it is immediate.  
  
She’s unsure if it’s Mary Margaret’s disappointment or Snow’s pride that prevents the woman from just asking Regina to stop by and put Leo to bed more regularly, but either way, it’s May by the time Mary Margaret caves and shows up with the baby in a sling tied around her chest and says, “I’m going to kill him.  Please help me.”  
  
Leo’s crying was audible even from within the car and Henry appears at the top of the stairs, hair sticking up at all angles and his shirt twisted over his torso.  As soon as he sees the baby, he just groans, “Mom, make him stop” before waddling back to his bedroom, sleep-drunk and disoriented.  
  
Emma is out on a night shift and so it’s just her, and after a second she says, “Give him to me; there’s cider in the study, I suggest you pour yourself a nightcap and then head up to the guest bedroom for some sleep.”  
  
“Thank you,” Snow says, in that simpering, slow way that she expresses her benevolence in, but before Regina can let her annoyance with that particular tone of voice get away from her, Leo is in her arms, irate and twisting.  The baby demands her attention, and she settles him comfortably before heading towards the kitchen; Snow slips out of her heels and wanders away from the baby with a palpable sense of relief, and Regina feels herself grow taller with the apparent knowledge that regardless of what world they dwell in, she has more aptitude for parenting than Snow ever will.  
  
Leo crows a few more times, but then just stares up at her, as he always does; she’s wondered if he perhaps can see the air around her, the veil of magic that they all carry with them and she once pierced so easily, but he’s probably more infatuated with how brown her eyes are.  As she bounces him, heading for the kitchen and shushing him, she realizes that she’d be no less out of place in a current White family portrait than she had been during the original ones painted after she’d married Leopold.  She’ll always be the darkness to their light, which begs the question of what that makes Emma.  
  
The girl looks like a White, but there is more than a little Mills in her.  
  
As the baby calms, she murmurs, “And what about you, little man?  Who will you grow up to be like?”  
  
Leo blows a spit-bubble in response, and Snow--somewhere behind her--says, “He’s stubborn like his father--”  
  
“Yes; he couldn’t possibly get stubbornness from anyone else,” Regina says, dryly.  
  
She sees Snow move forward, appearing in her periphery and then gazing out at the tree with a glimmer of recognition somewhere in her eyes; distant, but there, and so the clock ticks onward.  Time will get them all, in the end, and she runs her hand along Leo’s back until his breathing deepens, one steady heartbeat at a time.  
  
They’re both quiet for a few moments, the baby’s half-snores the only sound in the room, and then Snow says, “I’m really worried I’m going to mess everything up with him.”  
  
Happiness can be very hard to adjust to; it’s probably no different to someone who’s been chasing it for all these years, instead of trying to eradicate it, and Regina sighs.  “There isn’t much you can do wrong, dear.  Put him first, always--”  
  
Snow lowers her head slightly, and as the moon hits the blinds covering the kitchen window, shadows stretch behind her that make her hair look longer; all at once, it’s akin to standing next to the Snow of a different world, and Regina feels her hold on the baby tighten.  Then Snow looks at her, with such reluctant admiration, and says, “Did you ever feel like this about Henry?”  
  
“All the time.”  
  
“But you’re so--”  Snow says, before just making an indiscriminate hand gesture that can mean anything from _competent_ to _powerful_.  “I can’t really imagine you ever not knowing what to do.”  
  
Regina laughs, and the baby’s eyes blink back open, stare at her accusingly the same way that Emma does from time to time.  How nobody else is seeing the resemblance is baffling to her; Leo looks more like Emma’s son than Henry ever did, what with the dark hair he inherited from his father.  
  
“The secret to parenting,” she says, when Snow just curiously looks at her, drinking some more of her cider, “is to never let your child know that you’re making it up as you go along.  Isn’t that right, Leo?”  
  
Leo gurgles, and Regina looks at Snow and raises an eyebrow at her; _see?_  
  
“Well.  Consider that secret safe with me,” Snow says, and Regina takes a deep breath and lets those words mean exactly as little as they should.  
  
…  
  
As much as spring is Mary Margaret’s season in obvious ways, it’s also Kathryn’s, but as ever, Kathryn’s inherent goodness is so much easier on the digestive tract than Mary Margaret’s is.  
  
As Kathryn takes up office and immediately commences with a huge clean-up and revamp of the playgrounds and public parks in Storybrooke, Regina can physically feel the town start to brighten and flourish, until it’s the picture book village that she always wanted even below the surface.  
  
The effect is tangible on everyone in town; Emma has taken to not only singing in the mornings but now also _whistles_ when doing chores--irritating to the point of Regina just glaring at her from afar, which merely makes the pain-in-the-ass Deputy grin and then whistle a few notes through her teeth.  Killian responds to the spring by going on a two day bender and then landing on his knees in the country club kitchen, a house key outstretched on his palm, as Ruby nearly cuts off her own pinky finger in pure shock at the state he’s in--but as they move his sparse furnishings into their new house, three streets over from Regina (into a house that used to be occupied, but Emma’s happy endings have halved the property needs of the town), he sobers and settles as if the weather has given him no choice.  
  
She has coffee with Dr. Hopper, who tells her with some subdued excitement that he’s taking a vacation soon--the kind of thing that’s possible, now, in the new and freed Storybrooke--in a woodland bed and breakfast in Vermont, where Pongo and he will go on many hikes and be surrounded by nature.  A bug seeking bugs, Regina thinks, but she means it when she wishes him well; though Emma is all the confidante she needs now, he was the first to give her a chance, and there is no telling how different her life would be without that overture, in either reality.  
  
Work on the new school building breaks just as Mary Margaret’s maternity leave officially comes to a close, and on her way to the stables, she sees Alice with a stroller, Henry next to her, looking up with the kind of hero worship that young boys have of older, wiser girls at that age.  Alice is aware of his crush and amused by it at best, but the girl will never make him feel bad over it, and that’s how first loves should be; harmless and sweet, something to laugh about later.  
  
Halfway through the month, Emma sneaks into the bedroom at five in the morning and tries to settle without waking her up, but she does anyway--empty bed syndrome, as Emma had put it--and looks at Emma quietly stripping and then diving under the covers.  
  
“Hey,” Emma says, and presses night-chilly limbs to Regina’s warm ones, before saying, “So--Mulan basically told me that I’m completely dispensable in June.  Actually, she said she didn’t need me _ever_ , but I’m going to try to look on the bright side, which is that we can go whenever you want to.  If you’re still up for it, I mean.”  
  
“Camping,” Regina says, unable to hide the distaste in her voice.  “In a tent.  You know, one could say that I went through quite a lot of effort to eradicate the need for any of us to live without modern conveniences ever again.”  
  
“That’s not the point,” Emma says, wriggling in closer still.  “You’ve never done this before.  Not with us, anyway.  Which is the part that matters.”  
  
“I’m not killing my own food,” Regina says, wrinkling her nose.  “I never have and I’m not about to start now.”  
  
“That’s all right.  The kid’s really into worms and other gross crap like that, so I think he’ll get a kick out of fishing for dinner for us.”  
  
“Ugh,” Regina says, rolling onto her back.  “If I say that this makes me unhappy--”  
  
“Nope,” Emma tells her, following her and then hovering over her, pink-nosed and sleepy-eyed.  “That only works when you’re being honest.”  
  
“And I’m not honest about my feelings about camping?  Truly, you think I’m joking when I say that I’d rather spend five days as Mary Margaret’s maid-servant?”  
  
Emma grins, the kind of smug little expression that Regina used to want to claw right off her face, and then leans down and whispers, “You’re lying about not being happy.”  
  
Regina blinks and slowly says, “That’s--”  
  
“It’s okay.  I won’t tell anyone,” Emma says, brushing their lips together over and over again, until Regina completely forgets what she was going to say.  
  
…  
  
In truth, Henry’s excitement about her joining them on this now-annual tradition wipes out any reservations she might have; the notion of being invited, welcomed, _desired_ even, will never grow old, after so many years of being an unwanted nuisance in his life.  
  
“I’ll teach you how to start a fire,” he promises her, as Emma loads a last few bags into the jeep and then heads back inside for the coffee they’ll both desperately need for this drive to their designated camping site, about a hundred miles away from Storybrooke.    
  
She looks at him and her own fingertips, and wonders what he’d say if she would tell him right now that she used to be able to conjure up fire from thin air; he might consider it impressive, or he might consider it cheating.  Whatever else Emma’s ideas about parenting entail, and she’s still not entirely sure after all this time, they’re heavily focused on good, honest hard work.  It’s very much unroyal, and possibly the best thing that anyone has ever done for Henry, as he currently feels the opposite of entitled to the life he’s living.  
  
As Emma hands her a thermos of coffee, she looks at their son and says, “What else do I need to know to survive?”  
  
His eyes shine at the idea that she’s willing to think of their very much benign, safe family vacation as the wilderness adventure he wishes it was.  “Well, I have this book full of plants that you can eat and then ones that will make you super sick, so I guess we can go looking for safe plants together.  And I want to fish and um, Emma taught me how to make s’mores last year--but I guess we’re not having those if you’re coming.”  
  
“Of course we are,” Emma says, with a pointed look that says _don’t you dare ruin this_ ; just as Sundays are hers, this week is Emma’s, and the fact that she’s being invited along is clearly conditional on her not ruining the entire event.  
  
That’s a lot of trust, and after a second she just smiles at Henry and says, “I’ve never had a s’more, but I wouldn’t decline one prepared by an expert.”  
  
“Awesome,” Henry intones as Emma slams the trunk shut and says, “Ready?”  
  
…  
  
It’s the first time in twenty nine years that she’s set foot outside of Storybrooke, and she doesn’t know what she’s expecting; what actually happens is that as soon as they cross the town boundary, a boundless panic grips her heart, and Emma senses her distress immediately.  She reaches across the console and rubs Regina’s thigh for a few seconds, before letting their fingers loosely link together--and it’s with something akin to shock that Regina realizes that even outside of the boundaries of the spell they cast, Emma’s magic ebbs and flows between them.  
  
Whatever powers it, it isn’t the spell; it’s not even the bottled true love that Rumpelstiltskin unleashed on the still-hidden town that they were trapped in, then.  There has to be _something_ that powers it, though, and she watches a world that’s been nothing more than images on a TV screen pass by her while wondering what it could possibly be.  
  
“Any listener requests?” Emma asks, letting go for just a few seconds to fiddle with her phone.  
  
“The Runaways or Dirty Pretty Things,” Henry says, from the back, his head just barely sticking forward between both of their seats.  
  
Emma glances at him in the rearview mirror. “Chick rock, huh?”  
  
“They’re really cool.  Alice says that--” Henry starts, and Regina and Emma exchange a privately amused look, as Henry rounds up with, “And besides, girls are amazing.  That’s feminism.”  
  
Emma manages to smother some laughter in a cough before nodding.  “You’re right, and I actually like both of those bands but uh--your mom might not survive anything like that this early in the morning.  How about some … less loud girl rock?”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“I was thinking Blondie,” Emma says, before handing her phone to Henry.  “Pretty sure that once Alice discovers them, she’ll like them as well.”  
  
Henry frowns briefly, but then he says, “You think so?”  
  
“Mmhm.”  
  
“Okay.  But maybe we can listen to the Runaways later?”  
  
“Of course, dear,” Regina says, as Emma’s hand settles on her leg again and starts tapping out the drum beat that sounds from the car stereo a few seconds later.  
  
…  
  
By the end of their first day in the woods, Regina lies down on an uncomfortable sleeping bag and says, “I am too old for this.”  
  
“Yeah, those six years really take you over the top--”  
  
“Oh, if only it were actually six years,” Regina says, staring at the stars lining the sky.  The fire that they managed to get going after far too many frustrating attempts is flickering out somewhere nearby, and mosquitos buzz around them, even with the repellant that they’ve all vigorously applied.  It’s what one gets on account of camping by a lake, apparently; and Regina wonders to what extent this location is informed by the fact that somewhere, a universe away, Emma’s parents made their home right by a lake just like this one.  “At least part of you knows better than that, dear.”  
  
“It is in all the ways that count; so what if you’re a little wiser than you should be?” Emma says, blithely, before stretching out next to her.  “Besides, if you actually think you’re the only one with a tweaking back right now, try again.”  
  
“He’s loving every second of this, though, isn’t he?” Regina asks; they can hear Henry’s deep breathing from his own tent--a concession of this year--where he’s clearly asleep in a way that most can only hope to be.  
  
“Wouldn’t you, if you were a kid?” Emma asks.  
  
“Camping?  No, not so much,” Regina says, before sighing and admitting, “But I guess it’s not so much about the camping as that... we’re here.”  
  
“Yeah,” Emma says, folding her arms under her head and then shifting in closer.  “That’s always going to be the most important thing.  That we’re here.”  
  
Quiet like this will never do anything but make her anxious; she’s spent far too much time in her own head for that to ever change at this point, and so she swats away yet another mosquito and says, “What happens if this spell ends?  Will we still be here, then?”  
  
This Emma is incapable of playing coy; incapable of playing full stop, and just says, in a vaguely philosophical tone of voice, “She will be who she was before, but she’ll remember all of this.  Just like everyone else.”  
  
“ _She_?  Who am I talking to, if not _you_?”  
  
Emma stays silent for a few long moments, clouds blotting out the pinpricks of stars up ahead temporarily, and then slowly says, “I’m here for _you_.  And yeah, I’m her, obviously, but I’m also stuck in the spell.  She’s outside of the spell entirely; you know how it is with curses.”  
  
“Not from this side, I don’t,” Regina says, and after a few seconds looks at Emma and says, “Is anything we’ve done here real?”  
  
“Oh, come on, Regina,” Emma says, and looks at her with such devastating openness that Regina forgets to breathe for a few moments.  “How can you even ask that?”  
  
“If you’re truly here for _me_ , why don’t you just tell me what will undo this spell, because I’d like some time to prepare for it when it happens.  You might not be capable of feeling half of what you should, but I’m not so lucky; I never have been.”  
  
“You already know, though,” Emma says, and then goes back to staring at the night sky.  “It has to come from you.  That’s how it works; that’s how it always works.”  
  
“I liked you better when I thought you were far too dim to be capable of being cryptic,” Regina says, after a few moments of more unsettling silence; a sensation that she knows is supposed to be like peace, but in the life she’s lived, peace has only ever been fleeting.  
  
Emma snorts. “Maybe you can remember that, for later.  Maybe you can even tell her.  She might need to hear it.”  
  
“Emma--”  
  
“Not yet, okay?  Not yet,” Emma says, almost shushing her with the words, before adding a more current, more present, “Come here.”  
  
…  
  
The next day, Emma and Henry attempt to procure dinner; the fishing itself actually goes off without a hitch, because Henry _is_ fond of everything disgusting that crawls below the ground, and the lake is full enough of fish for even their uninformed amateur efforts to be successful.  
  
Of course, when the fish is reeled in, Henry is hit with an abrupt rush of remorse--”No, don’t kill it!” sounds loudly from the pier they’re fishing off of--and Regina watches as Emma counts to three and then gestures a few times, before reaching for the sizable fish and clumsily unhooking it.  
  
The fish starts flopping crazily as soon as she’s holding it, and it slithers out of her hands--and in chasing after it, she topples off the side of the pier--jeans and boots and all--and into the water below.  
  
Regina puts down her copy of Crime and Punishment--an old favorite; there is more for her to relate to in the Russian Empire than any single part of the United States of America--and sits upright, wondering if this is going to require an intervention, but Emma splutters back to the surface a second later and glares at Henry, who is laughing so hard he has to sit down on the pier.  
  
When a bedraggled, soaking wet Emma stomps back to the campsite--Henry busy packing away their fishing supplies--Regina has to fight the urge to laugh herself, but Emma shoots her a particularly vicious look and so she keeps it to a dry, “Ladies and gentlemen; the savior.”  
  
“Hey, I saved that fish,” Emma says, so blandly that they both chuckle after a second, as Emma tugs at her sodden jeans and sighs.  “Can you at least get me a towel from the tent or do you actually want me dripping all over our crap?”  
  
Regina smiles and then, seriously, says, “Please tell me we have alternative dinner ideas, because I get the feeling you’ve just turned our son into a vegetarian.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, no problem.  I brought everything we need to eat fluffernutters for a week,” Emma says, not batting an eyelash.  “You’re cool with that, right?”  
  
Regina feels her face react before she can stop it, but then Emma starts to shake with repressed laughter and finally sputters out, “Your _face_ \--”  
  
“Get your own damn towel, Deputy,” Regina snaps, fishing her book off the floor and heading off to where Henry is cleaning off his fishing rod; it’s probably time for another application of the lifetime supply of bug spray they bought--and that still doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough to get them through this single vacation.  
  
…  
  
Emma seemingly realizes she’s close to breaking point after two days and, after Henry goes to bed, says, “Time for some adult fun.”  
  
A bottle of scotch is produced from one of the various bags of food supply they’ve brought, and Regina rolls her eyes when she’s handed a plastic cup of it, but then adds, “I suppose this is a step up from necking the bottle.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Emma says, clanging their plastic cups together, and then declaring, to the lake and the night sky ahead, “Here’s to--a good life.”  
  
Regina scoffs softly, but takes a sip anyway.  
  
“What’s the craziest thing you ever did as a teenager?” Emma asks her, after a few moments.  
  
Regina tries not to tense, and then just softly says, “I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything crazy as a teenager.  My mother had me on too tight a leash.”  
  
“So you’ve never been skinny-dipping?” Emma asks.  
  
Regina just shoots her a look, but it sort of self-aborts when she catches Emma’s face in the dimming glow cast by the embers of their third, most-successful fire, and it suddenly feels like she’s on the verge of some sort of discovery that she can’t afford to miss.  
  
“Neither have I, if you can believe it,” Emma adds, smiling faintly.  
  
“In what world?”  
  
“Either,” Emma says, finishing the last of her drink.  “Didn’t want to piss off the nuns in this one, and didn’t have a chance to get into any fun trouble in the other.  I was too busy surviving, getting into fights about--I don’t know.”  
  
“Honor, I’m sure,” Regina says, with a deep sigh.  “You’re so much like your father.  The book casts him as the ideal man, but my God, the man has a proud streak that runs so deep that I’m surprised he can see past his own feet a lot of the time.”  
  
“I thought David was kind of an ass,” Emma admits, and then laughs softly, lowering her forehead to her knees.  “I also thought Mary Margaret was kind of a pushover.  You did a good job, covering up what they were really like.”  
  
“As did you,” Regina says, holding out her cup for another, more morbid toast.  “To improved relations.  May young Leo end up like none of you.”  
  
Emma smiles and then studies her for a few moments.  “What did you want to be, when you were growing up?”  
  
“A wife,” Regina says, after a few long moments of watching the fire flicker out.  “A wife and a mother.  Perhaps a gardener.”  
  
“So nothing with horses,” Emma says, with a soft sigh.  “Didn’t even get that right, huh.  Oh well.  If you don’t want the stables--”  
  
“No, I do,” Regina says, taking another sip of her drink.  “They’ve been quite the unexpected gift.”  
  
Emma smiles, and is abruptly so beautiful that Regina doesn’t know how she’s ever been oblivious to it; her hair is pulled back in a messy, slipping pony-tail and she’s wearing some obscure band t-shirt and a pair of comfortable jeans, but none of that can suppress the loveliness inherent to her.  The product of true love; a love that manifests itself outward and in.  
  
“Let’s do it,” Emma says, as Regina finds that she has to look away.  
  
“Do what?” she asks, finishing her drink.  
  
“Go skinny-dipping.  Come on.  Live a little,” Emma says, and without waiting for a response, starts pulling off her t-shirt.  
  
“If Henry wakes up--”  
  
“He won’t, but even if he does, we’ll be submerged.”  Emma’s fingers stray back towards her bra clasp, and she quirks an eyebrow at Regina.  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid to.”  
  
Regina rolls her eyes.  “Don’t bother with reverse psychology.  I’ll do this, but only because I reek of bug repellant.”  
  
“Mmhm,” Emma says, and then tosses a bra at her face.  “Race you.”  
  
…  
  
Emma knows better than to start a water fight with her, and instead they end up just floating in the water on their backs.  The lake is mostly still, but a gentle breeze gently buoys them up and down a little anyway, and Regina realizes that with her ears mostly underwater, she can actually relax in a way that she can’t when she can hear the world.  It’s always been out to get her, but water is a gentler force, more inclined to work with her than against her.  
  
After an uncounted number of minutes, she both feels and hears Emma flip and swim towards her, in the slow, even strokes of someone who swims regularly; Emma doesn’t in this world, meaning that it must be muscle memory exerting itself, and Regina lets her legs sink until she’s face to face with Emma again, who is treading water next to her.  
  
“Told you he’d sleep right through it,” Emma says, settling as well and then running wet hands through her wet hair, a small spray of droplets catching on her skin.  “And it’s nice, right?  I feel very--”  
  
“Free,” Regina says, and Emma smiles at her knowingly.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
It’s an unsettling sensation, feeling so understood, and she feels her blood slow at the notion that one of these days, that familiarity might be gone again; her expression freezes without her permission, and she jerks when Emma reaches for the back of her head and pulls her in closer.  
  
“Let’s fool around a little,” Emma entreats, and tangles their legs together before Regina can protest that she’s definitely too old for this, that they’re tempting fate, that nothing about what they’re doing can even remotely be described as fooling around anymore--  
  
The thought has her limbs stiffen and she sinks without warning; of course, Emma forces her back up, with a concerned, “Woah there.  You okay?”  
  
She has seen something she cannot unsee, and her panic is absolute, even as she struggles to put it into words; all she can do is helplessly stare at Emma, who is right there, of course.  As she has been for months, so how is it that she’s never seen before _now_ that--  
  
“Regina, seriously, are you--”  
  
“No,” Regina says, forcing herself to move; she starts kicking backwards and then shakes her head, curtly adding, “No, I’m not.  I’m cold and I want to dry off and then go to bed.  That’s--”  
  
“Regina--”  
  
“ _Stop_ ,” she snaps, and Emma does; lifts up and down minutely, her legs still working the water, but the rest of her just freezes.  “I’m tired, and this was an infantile, idiotic idea.”  
  
Emma nods after a second; inclines her head, as if saying, _as you wish,_ and never before has she loathed feeling imperial the way she does in that moment.  She ducks her head under again and then starts swimming back to shore, drowning out the sound of Emma following her while she can.  
  
…  
  
Emma leaves her be; in many ways, their relationship reverts to what it was when this all began.  They share a tent without touching; they exchange pleasantries that are meaningless.  The Emma that actually knows her, and that she now realizes she--  
  
That Emma is gone for the rest of their vacation, which feels sepia-toned without her.  There are more perfect pictures taken of a family that she’s both a part of and separate from entirely; this isn’t her son, this isn’t her wife.  These are people that she might as well have ordered from a catalogue, and the constant reminder that she doesn’t love them so much as that she’s incapable of looking at the shells they inhabit neutrally is enough to have her tossing and turning for nights on end.  
  
She swims, but the water doesn’t calm her; not now.  
  
Of all the things that she’s never been able to undo in her lives--and there have been many, God, there have been so many-- _knowing_ has always been the very worst, and now that she is aware, she cannot become unaware again.  That’s what this is; she knows, which is to her what believing once was to Emma.  
  
 _I think you know,_ her Emma had said about the exit strategy--and she does.  Of course she does, now.  Spells are, after all, meant to be broken.  The stories are wrong about so much, but somehow never about the crucial grand finale.  What comes next is inevitable, much like the ticking of the clock tower once Emma had set foot in town had been; much like the passage of time itself has always been.  
  
She can’t unknow, and at best she can savor what days she has left; wrap herself up in the kindness of this illusion, before it goes away forever.  
  
…  
  
On the last night of their trip, Emma says, “Hey, thanks for going along with all of this.  I know it wasn’t really your thing.”  
  
The “anytime” that wrenches itself out of her throat is so layered that she’s surprised it’s even audible, but Emma just winks at her and starts packing away most of their cooking supplies, as Henry wanders around his tent singing _ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!_  
  
…  
  
“Is this what you wanted?” she demands, ignoring the stinging in her eyes.  
  
Her only response is silence.  Reflexively, she flexes all the fingers on her right hand and extends it outwards; but the glow that’s meant to follow doesn’t, of course, because she doesn’t have magic here.  Not a particle of it; no, she has nothing without--  
  
“ _Is it_?” she snaps, shrill and loud; a few birds titter back at her and then, with a rustle of movement, break free from tree branches overhead.  Just like that, she’s utterly alone, standing heel-deep in muddied grass, yelling at two headstones like some witless harpy.  
  
The worst thing is, she’s not even sure which one of them she’s talking to; somewhere, she hears her mother laughing, and Daniel...  
  
Self-pity is a disgusting emotion, but he would tolerate it in her, and so it’s in front of his grave that she sinks to her knees and lets herself weep for yet another love that she knows she will not get to keep.  
  
…  
  
They’ve been back in Storybrooke for five days--pretending for five days--when she can’t take it anymore, and as Emma comes out of the bathroom, flicking off the light and heading for the drawer full of pajamas, Regina pulls her knees up to her chest, closes her eyes and says, “Come back.”  
  
“I’m right here--”  
  
“Not _you_ ,” she says, wondering if she’s going to lose the tenuous grip she has on her emotions before she’s even said anything.  
  
Emma pauses, and then turns to her with a soft, “Okay.  I’m here.”  
  
She’s had parts of a speech--one of so many speeches delivered--in her mind for the last few days, but they evaporate on impact, as soon as she sees Emma’s eyes and the awareness that lies in them, too.  
  
“Your... magic.  What it is it that makes it work even without your awareness?”  
  
“I think you know,” Emma says, quietly, before moving towards the edge of the bed and sitting down there, right by Regina’s feet, facing the apple tree.  
  
Regina lowers her forehead to her knees and takes a deep breath.  “You’re sure?  The conduit, it’s...”  
  
She feels Emma nod, and feels herself shrivel as Emma says, “If she’d known this would happen, she would’ve never... This was meant to be forever.  She never wanted to go back; all she wanted was to live a normal life, with a normal family for her son to grow up in.”  
  
“ _You_ never wanted to go back,” Regina says, emphatically.  
  
“No.  I didn’t,” Emma amends, before sighing and looking out at the yard again, devastated.  “I don’t think there is happiness like this out there for us in the real world.”  
  
“No,” Regina says, and only realizes that she’s crying when she lifts her face and her knees are wet.  “That kind of happiness is reserved only for a very select few, and it appears that you and I are not meant to be among them.”  
  
Emma closes her eyes, and when they open again, they glisten as well.  “Be patient with me, when this is over.  I’ll experience all of it for the first time, just like everyone else, and I won’t--”  
  
“I understand,” Regina says, and then just stares at the ceiling for a few seconds, swallowing compulsively.  
  
“When?” Emma asks, thickly.  “When are you doing it?”  
  
“Tomorrow morning.  I want--” Regina says, and then just gives up; her voice is barely working for her, and she’s tired of words.  There are too many of them that it’s too late to say, now, or that she shouldn’t be saying to this spell-encased version of Emma. What she wants is selfish enough for her to feel like asking for it at all is wrong.  
  
Emma shifts either way, with a quiet, “One more night.”  
  
She nods miserably, and starts when Emma’s hands abruptly wrap around her still-wet knees.  
  
“It’s okay,” Emma says, with a faint, melancholic smile.  “It’s been really good being here with you, Regina.  Thanks for everything you’ve done, for us.”  
  
Before she can respond, Emma kisses her on the forehead and wipes at her eyes for a few careful moments before freezing completely; two seconds later, she looks back at Regina and casually says, “Hey--I know it’s my night to read to Henry, but I’m pretty beat; want to trade?”  
  
Regina manages a smile, and then heads off to spend one final hour with a boy who doesn’t know better than to love her with all of his heart.  
  
…  
  
Any lingering feeling she might have that this is a sustainable life flees her when she realizes that being with Emma like this makes her feel like a prostitute.  
  
Emma’s hands curl around the slats of the headboard and Regina does what she can to memorize every single birthmark, every single freckle, every single scar on skin that she might not see again for a very long time, if ever.  At that thought, she has to force her eyes closed and lets her hands commence a study of their own, one that has Emma arching up towards her and eventually reaching for the ends of her hair, fingers tangling and then guiding.  
  
Her lips skate along the various blemishes on Emma’s otherwise perfect skin, down past her breasts and across a flat, formed stomach, until she finally lands on a smattering of stretch marks that actually make her pause for a long moment; long enough for Emma to tug gently and say, “Lower, please”, so politely that Regina almost laughs.  
  
The amount of magic that’s playing between them is indescribable; with one quick snap of her teeth on one of Emma’s nipples, the girl comes, seemingly surprised by it and then just eager for more.  All bets are off, now, and with every sweep of her hands and her tongue, she feels the power in Emma mount higher and higher, until Emma laces one of her hands with one of Regina’s and it starts feeding directly into her.  Her blood feels too warm, like her skin can’t actually contain what is happening inside of her, and her heart beats so loudly that it echoes in her own ears, blurring her awareness of anything other than Emma.  
  
And, oh, as her fingers slide inside of Emma, who issues a hissed, “Oh, my God, _yes_ ” at the practiced, easy movement, she finds herself looking upwards at a face that may never look at her like this again and craves the one thing she cannot have.  
  
Her mouth seals itself to Emma’s ribs, to the skin on the inside of her thighs, to the slickness she finds just inches higher--but all she wants is to track back up towards Emma’s face, and she can’t.  She doesn’t trust herself because how much she wants to kiss Emma, she’s rarely wanted anything; she wants it more than she wants revenge, more than she wants a do-over, more than she wants anything other than Henry’s safety.  
  
Eventually, Emma’s own hand removes the temptation; it covers her mouth as she starts to keen, and at that Regina closes her eyes and gives everything she can, just for a little while longer.  
  
They end on long moments of Emma trembling against her mouth, her own body shaking with echoes of the same pleasure; echoes that still linger as she kisses a soundless goodbye against the skin right below Emma’s left breast.  
  
“Come here,” Emma finally says, with a soft tug to a loose strand of her hair; she’s ready to kiss and cuddle, as she is every time they do this.  
  
The smile she produces in response to an entreaty that once disgusted her is the greatest lie she’s ever told, but it’s there all the same.  “In a second. Let me brush my teeth first.”  
  
“Ugh, fine,” Emma says, rolling her eyes--but as Regina watches for a few more moments, those same eyes start to slip shut, and she knows that she’s won herself the last few hours that she wanted.  
  
She waits for Emma’s breathing to even out, and then forces herself to leave the bed to make a few phone calls; her family will be the biggest loss, tomorrow, but it’s only in being forced to say goodbye to a whole world that she realizes that they are not all that she’s going to be giving up.  There is no telling what the people of this town will do to Killian once awareness dawns all over again, and as for Abigail--  
  
She sighs, and heads down the stairs one careful step at a time, trying to forget that by this time tomorrow her house will in all likelihood be devoid of anything that actually makes it a home.


	12. Chapter 12

_…_  
  
 _The Last Day_  
…  
  
It’s not possible to say goodbye to people who aren’t aware that they won’t exist tomorrow, and so she ends up having a series of asinine conversations; Killian wants to know if having a bed with a handmade quilt on it makes him less of a man, and Kathryn wants some input on whether or not renovating that castle out by the beach makes sense or if a safer, more child-friendly alternative should be built somewhere closer to town.  
  
After a few moments of hesitation, she eventually picks up the phone and calls the Nolans as well, and then feels a strange sort of relief when it’s David, not Mary Margaret, who answers.  She asks after Leo, who is for once asleep, as if he knows that he’s better off not being conscious for the events that will follow.    
  
“Thanks for calling, that’s--yeah.  We appreciate it, and everything else you’ve done,” David says, which is as good a note as she’s ever going to end on.  
  
“I’ve... appreciated being involved, more than I can say,” she tells him in kind, and then hangs up, before heading for the study and drinking a glass of cider underneath a fully sincere family photograph that she will never see again after tonight.  
  
…  
  
When she finally makes it up to the bedroom, it’s dawn, and she already feels as if she’s in the house by herself.  She isn’t, however, and as the door opens and she sees Emma, snoring quietly and without a concern in the world, she realizes that the emptiness she feels is inside of her as it was for so long.  
  
It’s not familiar anymore; no, what’s familiar is Emma’s hogging of most of the covers and strangely gymnastic sleeping positions, only deterred by Regina herself slipping into bed and carving out a form that Emma can wrap herself around.  
  
For a full year, she tried to put herself deliberately in Emma’s path only to be circumvented, and this is where they’ve ended up, somehow.  
  
It feels dangerous, getting back into that bed, but she has no choice; she wants to see Emma’s face while she still has license to look at it freely, a last set of stolen moments that are going to have to carry her for a very long time.  
  
…  
  
They say falling in love is like lightning striking.  
  
Perhaps it is, to some.  Regina has no doubts that the first time Snow laid eyes on her precious Charming, her worldview shifted the exact amount of degrees it needed to in order for him to _become_ all she saw; or perhaps that’s painting too sentimental a picture of a girl who had already buried both of her parents and fled from a stepmother who couldn’t love her either.  Perhaps the hearts had been in Charming’s eyes, and he’d had to force the object of his affections to surrender to them.  
  
Like father, like daughter.  
  
Dawn light plays over Emma’s face like the sun brightens the ocean, and everything about her looks so wholesome and innocent that the memories of what their history is colored with cannot stand the overwhelming wave of affection that washes over Regina, now that she recognizes her own feelings for what they are.  
  
There have been no thunderstorms here; no singular, overwhelming moments of realization, not one _oh_ or _there_ or _you_.  Not even the moment in the lake was like that, because she’d pushed it away as hard as she could have.  
  
No, this has been a slow invasion; a war fought over time, without any awareness on her part that it was being fought.  Her heart has rarely felt like a threat to her, in the last nine months; it hasn’t galloped out of her chest, hasn’t run to seek shelter anywhere.  Even those times she’s visited Daniel’s grave, it has mostly experienced a quiet calm--a mixture of grief finally washing away and then of new possibility that felt as frail as the first apple blossoms on the tree in the yard.  
  
Everything bears fruit eventually, though, and so she watches as a dream--perhaps of a different life, given the way her eyelids are shaking with tremors--plays over Emma’s face, and realizes that knowing and believing are very much the same thing, at the end of the day.  
  
Memories of Emma bending over a small, lifeless and translucent form in a hospital bed, all but defeated, but nonetheless aware of the depth of her love, make her close her eyes briefly.  
  
By the time she opens her eyes again, Emma is looking back at her, cautiously concerned.  
  
“What is it?” she asks, in that sleep-rough voice that Regina has long felt she has no business knowing at all.  This morning, however, she allows herself to think of it as she could have been doing for months now; and she realizes that out of all of Emma’s inflections, it’s her second favorite.  
  
She may not hear it again.  
  
“I spoke to your parents last night,” she starts, and watches as Emma’s eyebrows draw together.  
  
“I’m sorry, you did what now?” Emma asks, the sentence trailing off in a gigantic yawn.  
  
“I called them,” Regina says, and when Emma just blinks at her a few more times, she realizes that this isn’t going to be so simple.  She doesn’t get the luxury of doing this to an Emma who can see it coming; no, all she can do is tell the Emma that the spell created, who is here with her now.  
  
Hearts can also break in a flash; she can personally testify to that much, or could, a long time ago.  This, however,  is more of a slow fissure, widening with every word that will tumble out of her own mouth.  It hurts, but she owes Emma this memory.  Perhaps she owes it to herself as well.  
  
If she’s going to be a victim of true love, then it better be _true_.  
  
“Let me... There’s something you have to know,” she starts, and has to swallow thrice, bitter and painful, to go any further than that. “Our lives here, they aren’t real.”  
  
Emma, who normally takes a good thirty minutes to go from conscious to actually awake, stretches towards her and lifts up on one elbow.  “What do you mean?”  
  
There is so much trust in their relationship that the laughter that should follow a ludicrous statement like _our lives aren’t real_ never comes.  The crack in her heart, like a line running down a plaster ceiling worn with time and pressure and everything shifting around it, widens just a little bit more at the way Emma seems curious, but still blissfully unconcerned.  
  
It’s the spell’s last bastion, and she will destroy it, as she has destroyed so many things before.  
  
“Approximately... thirty years ago, I cast a curse on your parents,” Regina says, wondering if she can ever make this sound as factual as it now is.  “And the rest of the land, I suppose, but it was meant for your parents.  I wanted to make them suffer--”  
  
“Okay, hold up,” Emma asks, sitting up a little more and frowning at her.  “You know who my parents are?  And what you do mean a _curse_?”  
  
Her flesh feels like webbing, ready to be torn apart. _Nearly sixty five and feeling it,_ she thinks, and rolls onto her back.  
  
“Your parents are Mary Margaret Blanchard and David Nolan.  They--gave you up, when it was clear that I was going to destroy your life and theirs if they didn’t.  It’s hard to explain in terms you’ll understand, but a little over a year ago, you kissed Henry in a hospital bed--”  
  
“Regina, what the fuck--” Emma says, sounding utterly like her true self, without any prompting on Regina’s part.    
  
It’s abruptly bittersweet, but she forces herself to forge on while she can.  
  
“You kissed Henry in a hospital bed and you broke the curse.  Everyone regained their memories; you met your parents, in the sense that they realized who you were, for the first time, and it was meant to be your happy ending.  But it wasn’t.  You were unhappy, and the town was ripping itself apart at the seams, with too many conflicting opinions on whether or not we should go back to our home land or if we should stay here.”  
  
She can’t even look at Emma now, who has fallen deadly silent and is letting her talk.  
  
“You have--I used to think this one of your more noxious traits, but your irrepressible need to fix everything for everyone is what makes you … a good mother.  A good wife, even.  It doesn’t free you from selfish desires, however, and so you came to me, seeking a way out of our broken lives.”  
  
“Look, if you had a bad dream or something and you--” Emma says, but it’s unconvincingly, as if she cannot really mount a counter-argument to this deluge of deja vu.  
  
“We cast a spell together.  Us and … Mr. Gold.”  
  
“The travel agent _?_ ”  
  
Regina smiles, unwillingly.  “Back then, you thought of him as Rumpelstiltskin and myself as... Snow White’s evil stepmother.”  
  
A hand gets pressed to her forehead, clammy and cool at the same time, and Regina thinks back on the first time Emma touched her, in this realm.  A hand with a ring, wrapped around her neck and pulling her in close.  An initial tug that had led to a series of stumbling steps until she ended up where she is now, simply wanting to be in Emma’s arms.    
  
The injustice of what will come next will finally level the scores that have lingered between herself and Snow White, and she reaches for Emma’s hand and holds it while she still can.  The way that magic twines around their fingers, cementing the bond between them even now, gives her just enough strength to continue.  
  
“I know this sounds surreal; that it sounds too difficult to believe.  I have lived for... months, now, with competing realities in my mind, and if not for the fact that you and Henry have been there for me every day, I’m not sure what I would have done. But I need you to know the truth.”  
  
“The truth,” Emma echoes, dimly.  
  
“The truth is that in the real world, it will horrify you that you love me."  
  
“Regina, what the hell are you talking about--why would I ever be horrified by loving you--”  
  
“You have wished this life upon us, but none of this is real.  Once you regain your memories, you’ll recoil from these last ten months.  You’ll--” she says, before trailing off and burying the rest of that sentence somewhere deep enough where she won’t have to dwell on it.  “But you’ll remember them regardless, and I need you to remember one thing, above all.”  
  
It says a lot that, for a better upbringing, a better _life_ , Emma’s ability to cope with the surreal is akin to Henry’s; her imagination here, her hope for people and her belief in a just and true existence, is unparalleled.  Henry’s book of fairy tales would be all the leverage she needs, Regina knows, but the book isn’t here, and all she has is within her.  
  
Emma stares at her, still with some muted concern and overwhelming curiosity, and then finally asks, “What?”  
  
Regina shifts, and then leans in close to Emma’s face, cups it with both hands for one last time, and says, “If I didn’t actually love you, to every extent that I’m capable of such a thing, and my God, Emma, you have no idea hard it has been for me to accept that that’s what this is, this sickening feeling of wanting your happiness, this nagging, incessant desire to give to you--”  
  
“Jesus, Regina,” Emma sort of stutters out, and that gentle, appreciative _what did I do to deserve you_ washes over her entire face, until she’s everything that Regina knows she can’t hold on to.  “Not that I’m not enjoying the, um, passionate speech, but I’m not going anywhere, okay?”  
  
“I know,” Regina says, managing one final smile in the face of what she will now surrender.  “Please just remember that--if I didn’t love you, the _real_ you, this wouldn’t work.  You know that better than anyone, Emma.  I beg you, don’t forget it now.”  
  
Before Emma can respond, she closes her eyes and leans forward and presses a kiss to Emma’s lips--not her forehead, but her lips--and then lets her heart split cleanly in half.  
  
As far as all of her deaths go--  
  
…  
  
When she opens her eyes again, Emma has closed hers and is slowly raising a hand to her lips, before a frown starts to form on her forehead.  
  
It takes a few more seconds, and then her eyes lash open.  
  
“Oh my God,” she says, voice little more than a breath.  
  
Regina lets her hands fall away and waits.  
  
The horror slowly subsuming the woman she loves is everything that she ever wanted to inflict on Snow White.  Still, she can’t think of a single thing to say; not even when Emma starts shifting backwards, harried little breaths escaping from behind her mouth, as if the only thing she can do to hold back on her screaming is to just lock her voice literally away.  
  
Regina remembers that feeling, the way that Emma will remember _everything_ in the next few minutes; everything about the false life she constructed for them and, on some level, eventually grew to love--but she’ll also remember despising Regina, threatening her life and meaning every word of what she was saying.  
  
Magic comes at a price, always; and as Emma scrambles towards the en suite, purging an entire existence from her body while heaving for air she doesn’t know how to breathe anymore, Regina realizes that the price that Emma will pay is perhaps even greater than her own.  
  
She slips her false rings off her fingers and leaves them on her nightstand, and then wraps herself in her still-familiar robe, gearing up to face Henry and find out what else she will lose, now.


End file.
